Mumbai-On Thursday, the benchmark Sensex and Nifty indices continued to move lower as interest rates were kept untouched again by the Reserve Bank of India for the ninth time consecutively. This meant that food inflation has been unyielding.
Also, weak trends US market and foreign capital outflow made domestic stock market take a hit.
BSE index slumped 570.09 points or 0.72% to 78,897.92 points while NSE Nifty lost 169.95 points to 14,795.45 in early trading.
After six consecutive rate hikes since May 2022 totaling at 250 basis points of rate increases, the central bank entered a pause in April last year.
While unveiling the third bi-monthly monetary policy statement for this fiscal year on August 7, Shaktikanta Das, governor at RBI pointed out that Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) had decided to maintain repo rate at 6.5%.
He said that under increasing food inflationary pressure, RPI would be closely watched by Monetary Policy Committee members
“Meanwhile Indian Banks are adopting wait and watch mode as they expect cues from US markets after global FOMC meeting minutes release for further direction on interest rates before taking any call on interest rates,” Umesh Kumar Mehta head of research at SAMCO Securities told Moneycontrol.
The biggest laggards included Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd., Infosys Technologies Limited, Larsen & Toubro Limited, JSW Steel Limited, UltraTech Cement and Asian Paints.
Indian Rupee appreciated against USD but still trading in negative territory at Rs70 per dollar down by Rs0.24 paise with raising odds of a rate hike by Fed later this year. The currency opened at Rs69.84.
Tokyo shares ended lower today but other Asian markets rose for a second day running.
The foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold shares worth Rs 3,314.76 crore on August 8, as per the NSDL’s provisional data.
“FIIs have sold INR 20,228 crore in the equity market over the past four days. This is explainable given the higher valuations in India, fears of a recession in US and for other reasons related to unwinding of yen carry trade,” VK Vijayakumar Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services told Parami News.
Brent crude oil futures rose 0.17% to $78.46 a barrel.
On Wednesday, Sensex rallied 874.94 points or 1.11%, to close at 79,468.01 while Nifty jumped up by 1046 points or 1.33% to end at 79,639.20.
Nifty index surged by 323 points or about 2 percent from its previous closeduring mid-session trade hours today.
It gained 146 points during morning session before closing lower by about seven percent at 24 ,337.70 points.
