Indian stock markets this year so far has seen the steepest decline in 15 years. Year-to-date, the Sensex fell more than 10 per cent as of this week, wiping a little over $530 billon in value.
The last big yearly fall was in 2011 when close to $625 billion was wiped out from the market in the year, as benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty took nose-dive since the beginning of 2026.
While broader indices have been able to keep the losses under 11-12 per cent year-to-date, major sectoral indices have already crossed into the 20 per cent loss "bear" threshold. The NIFTY IT index is now down more than 20 per cent YTD, with it steepest Jan-Mar dip since 2008. Even the 2020 dip in the same period was under 15 per cent.
This week’s slump also led to the combined market cap of all listed companies falling 20 per cent YTD to $4.77 trillion.
As many tech giants hit their 52-week lows, the panic triggered by the US-Israel–Iran conflict seems to have blown into the Indian shores. Coming back to the NIFTY IT index, every single component was in the red on Friday morning, setting a new 52-week low of 29,117.20.
Consumer Price Index (CPI) retail inflation soared to 3.2 per cent in February in India, as per the recently released official figures In contrast, January 2026 inflation was at 2.74 per cent.
The latest data, released by the National Statistics Office (NSO), used the base year as 2024. Februrary also saw food inflation widen to 3.47 per cent from 2.13 per cent in January.
Markets opened on Friday the 13th in the red following the inflation data, and continued to dip. On Thursday, the Sensex had already slumped 829.29 points or 1.08 per cent to settle at 76,034.42 while the Nifty shed 227.70 points or 0.95 per cent to close at 23,639.15.
Friday opened with both benchmarks down 1 per cent, as the ongoing Middle East conflict and mounting oil prices sppoked investors.
With FIIs pulling money out of the markets, investors took the cautious route pushing benchmarks even lower. Thursday FII outflow was more than ₹7,049.87 crore.
