Domestic markets fell sharply on Wednesday as investors turned cautious ahead of the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) outcome, amid rising inflation pressures, continued rupee weakness and global risk-off sentiment. Concerns over sustained foreign investor outflows and elevated US Treasury yields further dampened sentiment, adding to volatility across equities and currency markets.
and witnessed an intraday fall of 504 points and 175 points, respectively.
At 12.56 pm, Sensex traded 270.86 points or 0.32 per cent lower at 84,867.41, hitting an intraday low of 84,763.64. Nifty 50 shed 101.45 points or 0.39 per cent to 25,930.75, moderating between 25,891-26,066.45.
Both midcap and smallcap indices depreciated close to 1 per cent. On the sectoral front, a majority of them traded in the negative territory, dragged by PSU Bank stocks shedding over 3 per cent. Consumer durables, auto, banking and financial stocks also experienced significant selling pressure.
Meanwhile, IT, telecom and private bank staged resilience. Investors appeared to be confident in the business outlook in the IT services space.
Top movers intraday: IT majors led gainers of Nifty 50
Wipro, TCS, ICICI Bank, Hindalco, Axis Bank and Infosys traded as the major gainers of Nifty 50, while Max Health, Shriram Finance, Tata Consumer Products, Bharat Electronics and were NTPC the major laggards.
Market breadth remained weak, with only 897 stocks advancing while 2,077 declined and 102 remained unchanged out of a total of 3,076 stocks traded on the National Stock Exchange at the time of writing.
The downside pressure was evident as just 24 stocks hit their 52-week highs compared with 189 (including Page Industries, Tata Chemicals and Colgate) touching new 52-week lows. Momentum was also subdued, with only 38 stocks locked in upper circuits, while 54 slipped into lower circuits, reflecting broad-based selling across sectors.
Under the PSU Bank index, Indian Bank slumped over 6 per cent, PNB, Canara Bank, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda depreciated 3-4 per cent.
Among the midcap segment, Vodafone Idea, Biocon, Tata Consumer, Indus Towers and Ashok Leyland soared 1-4 per cent, while Indian Bank, Bank of India, Hitachi Energy, IGL and M&M Financial dragged 3-6 per cent.
Smallcap stocks Neuland Lab, HSCL, Narayana Hrudayalaya and Devyani International gained 2-5 per cent, while Wockhardt, Angel One, Ola Electric and Karur Vysya fell 3-5 per cent.