Indian equity markets experienced another painful trading session on Thursday, heading towards an eighth consecutive weekly loss—their longest weekly losing streak in 25 years.
The morning trading window witnessed classical volatility: an initial dip followed by a brief mid-morning recovery, before heavy selling resumed around 12:00 noon.
By 1pm, the benchmark Sensex plunged over 950 points from Wednesday’s close to touch an intraday low of 71,527.28. The Nifty 50 mirrored this sharp downturn, shedding nearly 320 points to hit 22,301.30.
When viewed across the four sessions since last Friday's close, the scale of the market's retreat becomes stark. The Sensex has surrendered more than 2,368 points, while the Nifty has bled nearly 840 points.
Driving this unrelenting slide is historic institutional flight. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) dumped equities worth a massive ₹10,148 crore ($1.06 billion) on Wednesday alone, bringing total foreign outflows for 2026 to a record $27.8 billion.
Elevated US Treasury yields continue to pull foreign capital out of emerging markets into higher-yielding dollar assets ahead of Friday’s domestic market holiday.
Despite the macro gloom, a few buffers cushioned an even steeper crash. Global crude oil prices cooled below the $100 mark, with Brent crude dipping to around $97 per barrel as diplomatic communications between Washington and Tehran resumed.
Sectorally, IT stocks gained on softer US inflation data, while Kotak Mahindra Bank rallied 3 per cent following the appointment of Anup Kumar Saha as its new chief executive. Conversely, auto stocks dragged heavily, led by a 6 per cent drop in Bajaj Auto following weak domestic sales figures.
However, there arose a curious divergence between market sentiment and real-economy fundamentals. Industry body ASSOCHAM recently released its new Business Confidence Index, showing a steady 5.6 per cent year-on-year growth for the April–September period.
ASSOCHAM President Nirmal Kumar Minda noted, "The ABC Index is a composite index of India's economic pulse... to track whether economic conditions are improving, weakening, or remaining stable."
While corporate India’s operational health appears resilient, short-term equities remain firmly hostage to relentless foreign capital flight.
