Indian equity market opened lower on Thursday as a hawkish commentary from the US Federal Reserve spooked investors even though the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points along expected lines.
BSE Sensex was trading 255 points or 0.40% lower at 62,422. Nifty50 was trading at 18,633, down 28 points or 0.15% at around 9.40 am.
“Even though the Fed downshifted the rate hike to 50 bp as expected, the tone of the commentary was unexpectedly hawkish. The FOMC statement, “the ongoing hikes will be appropriate to reach a sufficiently restrictive stance that returns inflation to 2% over time” is hawkish but the market seems to ignore this expecting inflation to cool down earlier than Fed’s expectations,” V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at
said.
“The Indian market, though not completely decoupled from the mother market US, has been charting a slightly different path exhibiting surprising resilience even in the face of global weakness. This is due to India’s superior growth and earnings prospects, going forward,” he added.
Among Sensex stocks,
, , and were the top losers, falling about 0.5-1%. , , , , and also opened with cuts. However, , , and opened with gains.
Sectorally, buying was seen in banking, auto, pharma, oil & gas and realty while selling was seen in FMCG, IT and metal stocks. In the broader market, Nifty Midcap50 fell 0.06% while Smallcap50 surged 0.30%.
US stocks closed lower in a volatile trading session on Wednesday following a policy announcement by the Federal Reserve. Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.42%, S&P 500 plunged 0.61% and Nasdaq Composite declined 0.76%.
In early trade in Asian markets, Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.33%, South Korea’s Kospi declined 1% and China’s Shanghai Composite fell 0.28%.
Brent crude February futures, meanwhile, declined 0.69% to $82.13 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures decreased 0.89% to $76.59 a barrel.
(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)
For all the latest Business News Click Here
For the latest news and updates, follow us on Google News.
Denial of responsibility! NewsBit.us is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
