The Indian equity benchmarks fell sharply on Friday mirroring losses in other global markets after U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell repeated his pledge to keep credit flowing until Americans are back to work, rebutting investors who have openly doubted he can stick to that promise once the pandemic passes. The Sensex fell as much as 535 points and Nifty 50 index briefly fell below its important psychological level of 14,950.
As of 9:22 am, the Sensex was down 340 points at 50,506 and Nifty declined 86 points to 14,995.
Overnight, Wall Street slumped on Thursday and global stock markets declined after US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell repeated his pledge to keep credit flowing until Americans are back to work, rebutting investors who have openly doubted he can stick to that promise once the pandemic passes.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 345.95 points, or 1.11 per cent, to 30,924.14, the S&P 500 lost 51.25 points, or 1.34 per cent, to 3,768.47 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 274.28 points, or 2.11 per cent, to 12,723.47.
Back home, foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 223 crore on Thursday and domestic institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 788 crore.