Indian stock markets opened the week in a familiar state of anxiety on Monday, swinging between gains and losses as fresh turbulence from the West Asia conflict kept investors on edge.
The BSE Sensex climbed as high as 78,873.48 before 11 am after gaining 379 points, but the ride was choppy. A little before that, it had slipped 290 points into the red at 78,203.30. The NSE Nifty followed the same arc, touching 24,420.20 early before retreating to 24,342.40, and then moving to as high as 24,448.50. Currently, it is climbing, but the flux was evident.
The culprit for this swing movement was none other than crude oil. Brent crude spiked 5.57 per cent to $95.41 a barrel on Monday morning, after reports over the weekend indicated that the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly 20 per cent of the world’s oil trade passes, had been closed again, shortly after Iran briefly announced it open on Friday.
That announcement on April 17 had briefly sent oil prices tumbling 11 per cent, but Monday's reversal brought it all back. However, market watchers think that the broader indices do not yet reflect outright panic.
ICICI Bank was among the top five Sensex gainers, trading nearly 2 per cent higher after reporting a strong set of earnings for the March quarter. The private lender posted a standalone net profit of Rs 13,702 crore, up 8.5 per cent year-on-year, aided by an 8.4 per cent growth in net interest income and a sharp fall in provisions for bad loans.
The biggest gainers were, however, SBI and Trent, both up close to 4 per cent. Tata Steel, HCL Tech, Titan, L&T, Infosys, TCS, Maruti Suzuki, BEL, ITC, and HDFC Bank were among the morning laggards.
Asian market indices—South Korea’s Kospi, Japan’s Nikkei 225, Shanghai’s SSE Composite, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng—were all trading higher. Foreign Institutional Investors had also bought Indian equities worth ₹683.20 crore on Friday. But this might be reversed on Monday, given the Hormuz situation.
