Mumbai, March 16: The Indian stock market opened flat on Monday. During this period, the Sensex fell by 148.13 points or 0.20%, starting at 74,415.79. The Nifty also saw a slight decline of 35 points or 0.15%, opening at 23,116.10.
The market is experiencing widespread declines. In early trading, the Nifty Midcap 100 index dropped by 159 points or 0.29%, reaching 54,629, while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index fell by 145 points or 0.77%, settling at 15,750.
The decline was led by the real estate and oil & gas sectors. The Nifty Realty and Nifty Oil & Gas were the top losers in the index. Other sectors such as defense, PSU, energy, consumer durables, media, auto, infrastructure, PSU banks, and IT also showed losses. Conversely, metals, FMCG, commodities, pharma, private banks, healthcare, and financial services were in the green.
In the Sensex pack, stocks like UltraTech Cement, ITC, Tata Steel, Indigo, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, SBI, Bajaj Finance, HCL Tech, and HUL were in positive territory. However, stocks such as BEL, M&M, Trent, Power Grid, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints, NTPC, Tech Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj Finserv, Eternal, ICICI Bank, and Axis Bank were in the red.
Most Asian markets also showed declines. Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangkok, and Jakarta were in the negative, while Seoul and Hong Kong were in the positive. The US markets closed in the red on Friday, with the technology index Nasdaq seeing a nearly 1% drop.
The trend of selling by foreign investors continues. In the last trading session, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold equities worth ₹10,716.64 crores, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) invested ₹9,977.42 crores in the equity market.
Rising tensions in the Middle East have led to an increase in crude oil prices. As of the time of writing, Brent crude was up by 1.12% at $104.3 per barrel, while WTI crude rose by 0.43% to $99.13 per barrel.
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