Indian indices witnessed their biggest single-day fall since April 2021; Nifty touched an intraday low of 16,410 while Sensex fell to 55,132. The bloodbath was across sectors.
The equity market freefall continued for a second day. Markets started the week on a weaker note and shed over 2.18 per cent in continuation to the prevailing corrective phase. Taking cues from global peers, Indian markets were in freefall right from the start of the trading for the day. In the first one-hour of trading, Nifty took a fall of over 230 points and Sensex, 750 points.
Experts believe that the major reason for this sharp fall is rising COVID cases globally due to the new variant. “Markets reacted to the news of a sharp jump in COVID cases globally, which may result in a lockdown” says Ajit Mishra, VP-Research, Religare Broking Ltd. Though the situation is under control domestically at present, any impact on the global economic recovery would dent India’s prospects too. Apart from that, the continuous outflow of foreign funds is also weighing on sentiment, adds Mishra.
The Indian equity market has been witnessing higher volatility since November due to selling pressure from foreign portfolio investors. Indian equity markets are one of best performing equity markets among emerging markets. Higher growth in Indian markets has created imbalances in the MSCI Emerging Market index allocation. Experts consider this also to be one of the reasons behind the market volatility. “While other emerging markets were falling, India continued to outperform to such an extent that our weight in the MSCI Emerging Market index moved from 8 per cent to 12 per cent. This prompted some foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) to book profits,” says Nilesh Shah, Managing Director, Kotak Mutual Fund.
Reducing Liquidity
Major central banks across the globe have started policy tightening and liquidity reduction to curb rising inflation. Easy liquidity from the market is going away. The Bank of England hiked rates last week despite a pandemic-high Omicron related infection number, while the US Fed remained dovish. Moreover, experts believe that the Reserve Bank of India will also hike interest rates earlier than anticipated. All these factors have contributed to the continuous and massive market sell-off.
Sector-wide Fall
Today’s market saw selling pressure from all the segments. All sectors traded in line with the broader indices and ended in red, wherein PSU, realty, media and metal were the top losers. NSE Realty index fell over 4.90 per cent while Nifty Bank index fell by over 3.30 per cent. Nifty Midcap 100 and Smallcap 100 indices also felt the heat of the selling pressure, which led to a slide of 3.68 per cent and over 4 per cent, respectively. Among the 50 shares of Nifty 50 index, 47 closed in the red while three managed to close in green.
The benchmark remained under pressure in the first half as noticeable selling was witnessed across the board. However, rebound in the select index majors pared some losses in the latter half. Finally, Nifty settled around 16,614 levels; down by 2.18%.