The Indian stock market opened lower on Friday with heavy selling across the board.
The negative note witnessed in its last session on Wednesday continued today with the domestic market registering a decline in line with the Asian stocks, attributed to concerns of rising cases of Delta variant of Covid-19 and the emerging Afghan crisis, which may impact adversely on recovery.
The selloff on Friday was led by banking and metal stocks.. It has, however, recovered from the lows.
At 10.02 a.m., Sensex was trading at 55,323.06, lower by 306.43 points or 0.55 per cent from its previous close of 55,629.49 points. It opened at 55,159.13 and has so far touched an intraday high of 55,495.60.
The Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange was trading at 16,454.70, lower by 114.15 points or 0.69 per cent from its previous close.
The top gainers on the BSE Sensex were Asian Paints, Hindustan Unilever and Bharti Airtel, while the major losers were Tata Steel, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Dr Reddy's Laboratories.
Previous Closure
India's key equity indices see-sawed to record highs but closed on a negative note during Wednesday's trade.
Accordingly, after a healthy buying spree, the market breadth turned weak due to profit booking and negative European cues.
Initially, the key indices had a gap-up opening. The two key domestic indices gradually rose to touch record high levels intra-day.
Consequently, the NSE Nifty50 touched a record high of 16,701.85 points, while the S&P BSE Sensex reached 56,118.57 points during the session.
But profit booking and negative European cues dented the sentiments. At the end of the day's trade, the S&P BSE Sensex closed at 55,629.49, down by 162.78 points or 0.29 per cent from its previous close.
Similarly, the NSE Nifty50 closed lower by 45.75 points or 0.28 per cent to 16,568.85 from its previous close.
"Nifty has formed a bearish 'dark cloud cover' on daily charts. Even though it made a new high in the morning, the fact that contrary to the regional markets, it failed to sustain the gains and ended in the negative, raising some concerns," said HDFC Securities' Retail Research Head, Deepak Jasani.
"The broader market continued to show negative advance decline ratio for the fourth consecutive session. Nifty may find it difficult to breach today's high of 16,702 for the next 1-2 sessions," Jasani said.
