Stock Market Closing: Nifty ends below 17,200, Sensex slumps over 1500 points; metal, realty, IT among top drags

The Indian market witnessed the biggest fall since April 2021 amid negative global cues, including FOMC meet this week, on Monday. During the afternoon traded Nifty and the Sensex both gave up crucial 17,000 and 57,000 as the indices slipped briefly to day's lows of 16,997.85 and 56,984.01, both slipping more than 3.5 per cent on a single day. Sectorally Realty, Metal, IT and Media declined the most, while mid cap and small cap corrected up to 5 per cent during the day.    

Benchmark indices ended lower by 2.6 per cent each as Nifty closed at 17,149.10, down 468.05. points and the Sensex settled over 15,000 points lower to 57,491.51.  

Top losers on the two indices were JSW Steel, Bajaj Finance, Tata Steel, Hindalco, Grasim, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, Titan, HCL Tech and RIL, which corrected up to 7 per cent in Monday's closing.  

FOMC meeting, FIIs selling, pressure on IT and new-edge share and higher number of Covid cases remained the top factors triggering one of the biggest falls on Monday.  

"Markets have been correcting in the last few days on the back of fears of interest rate hikes across the developed economies plus the ongoing tapering of stimulus. Though the covid numbers are still something to ponder on, but omicron variant not being as severe has made market believe that the days of easy liquidity seem to be nearing an end," said Devang Mehta, Head - Equity Advisory, Centrum Wealth. 

He said Nasdaq has corrected by around 14 percent which has taken the sheen away from very good IT numbers & guidance locally. More than index correction this round of volatility has made lot of good businesses correct, which should ideally be utilized as an opportunity in adversity. 

“Indian markets opened negative following mixed Asian market peers as investors look ahead to U.S Fed meeting and rising geopolitical uncertainty. During the afternoon session, further sell off pushed indices well below psychologically crucial levels. Sentiments were so fragile that traders paid no heed toward RBI’s data showing that the country's foreign exchange reserves grew by $2.229 billion to $634.965 billion in the week ended January 14,” said Narendra Solanki, Head- Equity Research (Fundamental), Anand Rathi Shares & Stock Brokers on market performance.