Mumbai: India’s major equity indices fell on Thursday ahead of the close of F&Os, matching global counterparts and led by significant losses in banks and metals sectors. According to market watchers, a massive jump in India’s major stock indexes this year and widespread retail participation have raised concerns about overvaluation.
Morgan Stanley downgraded India from ‘overweight’ to ‘equal-weight’, citing expensive valuations and said it expects the market to strengthen before potential short-term headwinds.
In trading late on Thursday, equity indices extended their intra-day losses and market indices were hovering near the day’s lows with BSE Sensex and Nifty 50 trading nearly 2% lower.
The BSE Sensex was down 1143 points at 60,000, while the benchmark Nifty was trading down 356 points at 17,854 at 3.30 pm amid a weak trend in global markets and foreign fund outflows.
Analysts believe that frequent selling by FIIs is a major reason for this fall in the market.
Nifty sector indices were in the red with a fall of 2.3%. Bank Nifty fell over 5% to close at 40,652. The Nifty Metal index fell nearly 2 per cent.
On a stock-by-stock basis, ITC has registered a decline of over 5% despite reporting a net profit of Rs 3,697 crore for the September quarter as against Rs 3,252.62 crore in the same period last year.
Titan is now trading at 2,379.05, down 3.29% after the September quarter results.
On BSE, Kotak Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank have lost 3.23%, 3.29% and 2.63% respectively in the private sector banking market.
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