Markets fall in early trade on unabated foreign fund outflows, Middle East conflict

Mumbai : Stock market indices fell early on Friday, continuing the previous day's steep drop due to ongoing foreign fund outflows and escalating tensions in the Middle East. For the fifth consecutive day, the BSE Sensex continued to fall and decreased by 354.67 points to 82,142.43. The NSE Nifty fell by 114.1 points to 25,136. Bajaj Finance, Asian Paints, NTPC, UltraTech Cement, State Bank of India, and Bajaj Finserv were the top underperformers among the 30 Sensex companies. HCL Technologies, IndusInd Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, and HCL Technologies saw increases in their stock prices.

According to exchange data, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) sold equities amounting to Rs 15,243.27 crore on Thursday. In the Asian markets, Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong were experiencing gains in trading. Mainland China's markets are shut down because of a holiday. Thursday saw the US markets closing with a decrease. In the past three days, there has been a significant amount of FII selling worth Rs 30,614 crore in the cash market. FIIs are transferring funds from costly India to affordable Hong Kong in anticipation of the monetary and fiscal measures introduced by Chinese authorities to boost the Chinese economy and enhance the profits of Chinese corporations. V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said it is still unknown how this Chinese recovery hopes will unfold.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell by 0.06 per cent to USD 77.57 per barrel. In its fourth consecutive decline on Thursday, the BSE index dropped by 1,769.19 points, or 2.10 pc, closing at 82,497.10. Throughout the daytime hours, it dropped by 1,832.27 points which equated to a 2.17 percent decrease, reaching a total of 82,434.02. The Nifty dropped by 546.80 points, representing a decrease of 2.12 pc to 25,250.10. During the previous day's trading, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold a total of Rs 15,243 crore worth of assets, causing a significant drop in the Nifty index. This was a result of the market being highly reactive to news related to the Middle East, according to Prashanth Tapse, who is a Senior Analyst.