Profit booking and sales in IT and pharma stocks led to the Indian stock markets wiping out morning gains and settling lower on Wednesday’s trading close. BSE benchmark Sensex slid 0.21 per cent (down 166 points) and NSE Nifty 50 fell by 0.31 per cent (down 75 points).
Earlier in the day, the RBI announced it retained the GDP growth outlook as well as the repo rate. The BSE Sensex, during the day, hit a low of 80,448.82 (down 261 points) while the Nifty fell as low as 24,574.20 (down 110 points).
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Sun Pharma, Tech Mahindra, HCL Tech, Infosys, Bajaj Finance, Eternal, and TCS led the laggards in the 30-pack Sensex, shaving off gains from the likes of Asian Paints, Mahindra & Mahindra, BEL, Adani Ports, SBI, and Trent.
“The pharma sector underperformed, emerging as a notable casualty of the tariff warnings,” warned Vinod Nair of Geojit Investments. But the domestic market remained strong despite the renewed trade tensions, noted experts.
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Other Asian market indices closed in the green, especially the Nikkei 225, SSE Composite, and Hang Seng benchmarks.
Despite Trump’s grandstanding on more tariffs, the US markets closed in the red on Tuesday, while Brent crude soared 1.61 per cent to $68.73 a barrel on Wednesday.
A day earlier (Tuesday), Domestic Institutional Investors purchased a net Rs 3,840.39 crore worth of equities, balancing off Rs 22.48 crore in FII offloading. This is expected to continue as Wednesday’s FII-DII numbers are reported later.
The rupee recovered from its record low level and closed 15 paise higher at a provisional 87.73 vs the dollar on Wednesday as the RBI’s call to keep the interest rate steady helped the currency.