Mumbai. The local stock markets fell for the fourth consecutive day on Wednesday and the BSE Sensex dropped by more than 667 points. The market came down due to profit booking by cautious investors before the results of the Lok Sabha elections. The 30-share BSE Sensex closed below 75,000 points at 74,502.90 points, down 667.55 points or 0.89 percent. During trading, it fell 715.9 points to a low of 74,454.55 points. The BSE Sensex had reached its highest level of 76,009.68 points on May 27.
The National Stock Exchange Nifty also closed at 22,704.70 points with a fall of 183.45 points or 0.80 percent. Nifty closed at its highest level of 23,110.80 points on Monday. Among the Sensex stocks, Tech Mahindra, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank, UltraTech Cement, Axis Bank, Reliance Industries and Infosys were the major losers.
On the other hand, shares of Power Grid, Sun Pharma, Nestle, ITC and Bharti Airtel rose. Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services, said, “In view of the weak trend globally, investors booked profits ahead of the release of core PCE (personal consumption expenditure) data in the US. This figure gives an indication about inflation. Inflation is likely to increase.”
Religare Broking Ltd. Senior Vice President (Research) Ajit Mishra said, “The market continued to decline and it came down by more than half a percent. After the initial decline, the Nifty fluctuated in a range and at one point it came down to a low of 22,704.70 points. With the settlement of deals in the futures and options segment of May nearing, volatility may continue.” Analysts also say that with the rise in inflation globally, the expectation of the US Federal Reserve’s policy rate cut has diminished. A weak trend was seen on a broad scale. The performance of financial and IT stocks remained weak.
BSE Midcap, the mid-cap index, fell 0.38 per cent, while Smallcap rose 0.23 per cent.
In other Asian markets, South Korea’s Kospi, Japan’s Nikkei and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng were in losses, while China’s Shanghai Composite made gains. There was a downward trend in the early trade in major European markets. The US market had a mixed trend on Tuesday. Voting for the final phase will be held on June 1. The results of the general election will be declared on June 4. Meanwhile, global oil benchmark Brent crude rose 0.88 percent to $ 84.94 per barrel.
According to stock market data, foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 65.57 crore on Tuesday. The BSE Sensex was down 220.05 points on Tuesday while the NSE Nifty fell 44.30 points. Meanwhile, S&P Global Rating has raised India’s credit rating outlook from ‘stable’ to ‘positive’. This change in India’s rating outlook has been possible after a gap of 14 years amid expectations of strong growth, better quality of public expenditure in the last five years and broad continuity in reforms and fiscal policies. S&P, however, has retained India’s rating at the lowest investment grade ‘BBB-‘.