The domestic equity markets fell into heavy losses after starting on a weaker note on Friday as investors feared that the comment by US President Donald Trump could again escalate tensions between US and China. Meanwhile, Asian stock markets inched up slightly with market participants keeping a closer look at developments in US-China trade negotiations. BSE Sensex dropped 187.34 points to a day’s low of 34,961.78 on Friday after opening marginally down at 35,143.59 on Friday while NSE Nifty marked a low of 10,631.15, down by 51.55 points.
Shares of Bajaj-Auto, Sun Pharma, Yes Bank, HUL and Kotak Mahindra Bank were the top gainers while stocks of Wipro, L&T, HDFC Bank, Infosys, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Adani Ports were the top laggards among the BSE Sensex constituents on Friday. Shares of Anil Ambani group’s telecom firm Reliance Communications extended yesterday’s gain. The stock of RCom rallied 65% on Thursday.
Shares of heavyweight companies such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC, ITC, L&T and Infosys contributed the most to the Sensex losses on Friday, on a collective basis, these six shares alone wiped off nearly 140 points out of the index.
Shares of RCom, Time Technoplast, JK Tyre, Reliance Naval and Engineering (RNaval) and Videocon were the major gainers while shares of SRF, Voltas, Parag Milk, TVS Motor, ICRA were the top losers. Up until 9:55 am, out of the 1,793 traded companies, 800 were trading in green, 897 were trading in red while 96 remain unchanged.
US stock markets ended marginally lower on Thursday as market participants remained cautious over ballooning crude oil prices and trade war worries between US and China. According to a Reuters report, US President Donald Trump commented that China “has become very spoiled on trade,” raised doubts on his efforts to avoid a tariff war between the world’s two largest economies, increasing investor jitters at the outset of the second round of high-level negotiations. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 54.95 points or 0.22% to 24,713.98, the S&P 500 lost 2.33 points or 0.09% to 2,720.13 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 15.82 points or 0.21% to 7,382.47.
