Sensex and Nifty Tumble Over One Percent at Opening Bell

Mumbai:Dalal Street witnessed intense selling pressure at Monday's opening bell as the benchmark equity indices, the BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50, plummeted over 1% each. Tracking a massive rout in global equities and spiking energy prices due to heightened geopolitical tensions in West Asia, investor sentiment turned deeply risk-averse, triggering broad-based liquidation across key sectoral indices.

 At the 9:15 AM opening bell, the 30-share BSE Sensex plunged 827 points, or 1.14 percent, to open at 73,421.61. Simultaneously, the broader NSE Nifty 50 lost 286 points, or 1.22 percent, sliding down to 23,080.70. The immediate trigger for the market panic was a fresh exchange of missile strikes between Iran and Israel over the weekend, which effectively derailed regional ceasefire hopes.

This military escalation caused global benchmark Brent crude prices to surge over 3.5 percent, crossing 96 dollars per barrel, a move that heavily penalizes oil-importing economies like India by stoking fiscal deficit and inflation concerns.  The domestic Information Technology (IT) sector bore the heaviest brunt of the opening onslaught, with the Nifty IT index sliding 1.85 percent. Domestic tech majors tracked a steep 4.18 percent correction on Wall Street's tech-heavy Nasdaq from the previous Friday, which was driven by artificial intelligence spending uncertainties and strong U.S. jobs data that suggested interest rates will remain higher for longer.

 Heavyweight IT constituents including Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) led the losers' chart, dropping up to 3 percent in early trade. Other major laggards included Mahindra & Mahindra, InterGlobe Aviation, and Hindalco. Market breadth remained heavily negative, with nearly 2,000 stocks declining against fewer than 700 advances, forcing the rupee to weaken by 38 paise to 95.32 against the U.S. dollar amid relentless Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) outflows.