Mumbai: India’s key stock indices slumped, settling over 2% lower, as concerns global growth will suffer due to the tariff war between the United States and China triggered fund outflows from equities around the world.
International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde’s comments that stock market valuations had been “extremely high”, spurred a meltdown in the US markets overnight, spilling over to Asia on Thursday.
In a volatile trading session on Thursday, the barometer index, Sensex, had crashed over 1,000 points at one point.
Expectations that the US Federal Reserve would continue to tighten rates also hurt demand for the Indian currency and equities.
The rout in equities worsened investor sentiment for the Indian rupee as well. At 4.00 p.m., the currency traded around 74.11 against a US dollar, after slumping to a new low of 74.48 earlier in the day. The rupee had opened at 74.31 at the Inter-Bank Foreign Exchange Market.
Heavy selling was witnessed in banking, IT, metals, auto and capital goods stocks. All 19 sector-based indices on the BSE, except the energy index, traded in the red.
The NSE Nifty50 provisionally closed at 10,234.65, down 225.45 points or 2.16 per cent.
The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex, which had opened at 34,063.82 points, settled at 34,001.15 points, down 759.74 points or 2.19 per cent.
The Sensex touched an intra-day high of 34,325.18 and a low of 33,723.53.
[source_without_link]IANS[/source_without_link]