SENSEX falls over 200 points, NIFTY50 hovers around 24,600; banking, financial services shares top drags

The Indian equity benchmarks staged a gap down opening on Friday, August 7, mirroring weak trend in other global markets. The SENSEX fell as much as 503 points and NIFTY50 index touched an intraday low of 24,529 dragged down by index heavyweights like ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel, Trent and State Bank of India.

As of 9:22 am, the SENSEX was down 288 points at 78,667 and NIFTY50 index dropped 39 points to 24,607.

Asian markets were trading lower ahead of US jobs data that could prove pivotal for next month's US Federal Reserve's interest rate decision and oil prices rose amid ongoing geopolitical tensions in West Asia.

Japan's Nikkei fell 0.92%, China's Shanghai Composite advanced 0.3%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng declined 0.1% and South Korea's KOSPI dropped 1%.

Wall Street witnessed a bearish trend on Thursday, with all three major indexes closing in the negative territory.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, snapping its 5-day winning streak, lost 0.85% to settle at 53,885.10. The S&P 500 slipped 0.18% to 7,709.96, while the NASDAQ Composite ended flat with negative bias at 26,348.35, down 0.06%.

Seven of 15 major sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) were trading lower led by the NIFTY Financial Services index's 0.7% decline. NIFTY Bank, Media, PSU Bank, Pharma and Private Bank indices were also down between up to 0.5%.

On the other hand, IT, FMCG, auto and realty shares were witnessing buying interest.

Broader markets were trading on a mixed note as NIFTY Midcap 100 index rose 0.14% while NIFTY Smallcap 100 index declined 0.14%.

Among the individual shares, Britannia rose as much as 4.65% to hit an intraday high of ₹5,655 after the company said that its consolidated sales in April-June period came in at ₹4,964 crore and net profit rose 14% to ₹593 crore.

Siemens Energy shares surged as much as 11.25% to ₹3,617.75 after its net profit in the first quarter of current financial year rose 68% to ₹441 crore from ₹263 crore in the year-ago period.

Its net sales rose 39% annually to ₹2,486 crore.

Bajaj Finance was top loser in the NIFTY50 index, the stock fell 4.12% to ₹1,098.

Bajaj Finserv, Trent, Shriram Finance, Jio Financial Services, Ultratech Cement, Cipla, Axis Bank, Eternal, JSW Steel and Reliance Industries also declined between 0.4% and 3.2%.

On the flip side, Tech Mahindra, TCS, HCL Technologies, ONGC, Infosys, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro, Eicher Motors, Hindustan Unilever and Bharat Electronics were top gainers in the NIFTY50 index.

The overall market breadth was marginally positive as 1,585 shares were advancing while 1,270 were declining on the NSE.