Indian equity benchmark indices made a gap-down opening on Friday, tracking weakness across global markets, with inflation laying as the major threat. Investors all around appear sceptical of central banks’ ability to tame the soaring inflation, despite the latter hiking interest rates to do so.
At 12:08 pm, benchmark gauges Nifty 50 tumbled 1.66% and Sensex lost 874.3 points or 1.57%, joining the global rout.
Fear barometer India VIX surged 5.52% to 21.41 levels, indicating high market volatility.
All sectoral indices under the Nifty Basket were slumping deep in red, led by Nifty Metal tanking over 3%, while Nifty IT and Nifty Realty followed suit. Nifty Bank declined 1.8%.
Investor wealth on Dalal Street was wiped out by Rs 4.8 lakh crore in the first 15 minutes of the session opening.
A day after the US Fed’s biggest rate hike in 22 years, of 50 bps to control the multi-year high inflation, the Bank of England increased the key policy rate by 40bp on Thursday, its highest since 2009, and raised the inflation target of 2022 from 5.75% to 10%, spooking investors globally.
“India cannot remain uncoupled from this trend particularly when FPIs are on a selling spree and has more firepower to remain bearish”, stated Dr V K Vijayakumar of Geojit Financial.