The Indian stock market witnessed a decline today, halting the gains of the last two days. Selling pressure was seen in the market on the last trading day of the week. The 30-share BSE Sensex was trading 400 points or 0.19% lower at 85,467.49, below its opening level of 85,347.40. Nifty was trading 0.21% or 54.75 points lower at 26,137.40, below its opening level of 26,109.55.
Sensex on red mark
22 out of 30 Sensex companies declined. Shares of Tata Steel, HCL Tech, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Adani Ports, BEL, Eternal and Bajaj Finserv were among the biggest fallers, falling up to 0.9%. Today only eight stocks are trading higher. Some buying in M&M, NTPC, Asian Paints, TCS, Maruti Suzuki and UltraTech Cement helped arrest the losses in the headline index. All sectoral indices were in the red, with the Nifty Metal index down 1%. After this the Nifty Financial Services index fell by 0.5%. The Nifty Midcap index fell 0.39%, while the Nifty Smallcap index fell 0.27%. Meanwhile, India VIX rose 10%. Also known as the “Fear Index”, it measures future market volatility.
The condition of Asian market is bad
The condition of the Asian market looked bad on Friday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.57% at the open, while the Topix slipped 0.72%. South Korea’s Kospi index fell 4.09 percent, while Kosdaq fell 3.01 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was also trading down 1.3 percent. The fall in the Asian market today may be due to investor concerns regarding changes in US interest rates. Additionally, a weakening job market and sharp selling in global technology stocks also contributed to the decline. Many Asian tech companies including Japan’s SoftBank have suffered losses due to this selloff. SoftBank alone has fallen by more than 10 percent.
US market also declined
The US market also declined on Thursday. The Nasdaq closed down 2.16 percent, while the Dow fell 0.84 percent, and the S&P 500 fell 1.56 percent by the close.
