NIFTY Bank nosedives 2,356 points as Middle East crisis escalates, oil surpasses $100 a barrel

The NIFTY Bank index plummeted on Monday, March 9, as all constituents, including HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, were trading in red amid Middle East conflict and crude oil surpassing $100 a barrel.

The index fell was 2,356 points, or 4.08%, to 55,426.95 at 9:53 am.

The decline was led by a freefall in heavyweights like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank, among others.

Shares of Union Bank of India were down 5.97%, while SBI fell 5.49%. HDFC Bank shares slid 3.15% to ₹830 apiece, with a market capitalisation of ₹12,77,630.08 crore.

Stocks of Yes Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and IndusInd Bank have descended 3.43%, 3.53%, 3.88% and 3.84%, respectively.

Meanwhile, benchmark indices NIFTY50 and SENSEX collapsed nearly 3% on Monday as rising crude oil prices and a bearish trend in global equities weighed heavily on investors' sentiment. The continuous foreign fund outflows also made investors jittery.

SENSEX slid 2206 points to 76,712, while NIFTY fell 2.71% to 23,788.

Apart from Coal India and Reliance, all NIFTY constituents were trading in the red. InterGlobe Aviation, SBI, Shriram Finance, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki, L&T, Jio Financial Services, Tata Steel, Tata Motors PV, JSW Steel, Axis Bank, UltraTech Cement, ICICI Bank, Eternal and Mahindra & Mahindra were among the major laggards.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, was quotinghigher by a staggering 25.68% at $116.5 per barrel in futures trade as the war between US-Israel and Iran intensified.

On Friday, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) offloaded equities valued at ₹6,030.38 crore, according to exchange data. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) purchased stocks worth ₹6,971.51 crore in the previous trade.