Opening Bell: Nifty slips below 16,500, Sensex drops around 400 points; Consumer Durables worst hit

Amid mixed cues from global markets, the Indian market opened on a negative note on Tuesday. Following SGX Nifty trends, headline indices opened lower by more than half per cent on Tuesday.  

The broader Nifty50 declined 0.6% to open below 16500, and Sensex shed over 300 points to open around 55,400. The two indices opened at 16,469.60 and 55,373.18 respectively.  

Following benchmarks, Nifty midcap and small cap indices were seen trading lower by more than 0.8% as India VIX sat around 20-mark.  

On sectoral front, all Nity sectoral indices slipped in the red with Consumer Durables and Realty taking the maximum hit.

"Two crucial numbers coming this week are significant - RBI's rate hike tomorrow and the inflation rate in the US expected on Friday. RBI's rate hike is a foregone conclusion; the only unknown is the quantum of the rate hike. Even if the rate hike is by a steep 50bp, the market is unlikely to be impacted much since frontloading of the rate hike will be more effective in anchoring inflation expectations," said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

The market direction is likely to be influenced more by the inflation in the US, which, in turn, will decide how far the Fed will go in raising rates, the expert said.

"This will be the key determinant of possible 'risk on' or 'risk off' in equity markets globally. A rising rate scenario will improve the margin of the banking sector since deposit rates lag lending rates. The most attractively valued segment in the market now is financials, particularly banking," he added. 

In the pre-open, the Sensex extended losses as the 30-share index declined by more than 300 points with only two stocks advancing and the rest declined. 

Earlier, the trends from Asian market remained largely negative on Monday as all major indices were trading in the red in early trade on Tuesday. SGX Nifty Futures declined over 100 points on the Singaporean exchange, Hang Seng Index at the Hong Kong Exchange and Chinese Shanghai Composite were seen trading lower by 0.6% and 0.1% respectively. However, Japanese Nikkei 225 gained nearly 0.5% in the early trend.  

On Monday, the US market had managed to close in the green on Monday as Dow Jones made recovery from the day's lower level to end marginally higher by 0.05%, Nasdaq gained 0.40% and S&P 500 settled with 0.31% gains.