Stock Markets Decline For 3rd Day On Foreign Fund Outflows, Weak Global Peers

Falling for the third straight day, benchmark index Sensex declined by nearly 95 points while Nifty slipped below 25,500 on Friday as relentless foreign fund outflows and weak trends in global markets hit investors' sentiment.

The 30-share BSE Sensex declined 94.73 points, or 0.11%, to settle at 83,216.28. During the day, it tanked 640.06 points, or 0.76%, to 82,670.95.

The 50-share NSE Nifty dipped 17.40 points, or 0.07%, to 25,492.30.

Among Sensex firms, Bharti Airtel tumbled 4.46% after Singtel said it has sold about 0.8 per cent stake in the firm for ₹10,353 crore (SGD 1.5 billion).

Tech Mahindra, Trent, Reliance Industries, HCL Tech, Hindustan Unilever, and ITC were also among the laggards.

However, Bajaj Finance, Tata Steel, Mahindra & Mahindra, and Bajaj Finserv were among the gainers.

"Domestic equities rebounded from early losses as buying emerged at key support levels, though it may be premature to call this a trend reversal amid mixed earnings, cautious global cues, and persistent FII outflows.

"Going forward, markets will closely monitor US shutdown and tariff-related developments with US-India and US-China deals to assess the durability of the current momentum," Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Investments Limited, said.

The BSE midcap gauge went up by 0.25%, while smallcap ended marginally lower by 0.01%.

Teck dropped 1.46%, followed by telecommunication (1.19%), power (0.52%), BSE Focused IT (0.50%), IT (0.39%) and services (0.37%).

However, metal jumped 1.41%, financial services (0.74%), commodities 0.65%), auto (0.55%) and bankex (0.31%).

In a holiday-shortened week, the BSE benchmark tanked 722.43 points or 0.86%, and the Nifty declined 229.8 points or 0.89%,.

A total of 2,105 stocks declined while 2,069 advanced and 141 remained unchanged on the BSE.

In Asian markets, South Korea's Kospi, Japan's Nikkei 225 index, Shanghai's SSE Composite Index and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index settled lower.

Markets in Europe were trading lower.

US markets ended significantly lower on Thursday.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth ₹3,263.21 crore on Thursday, however, Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs) bought stocks worth ₹5,283.91 crore, according to exchange data.

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped 1.31% to USD 64.21 per barrel.

On Thursday, the Sensex declined 148.14 points, or 0.18%, to settle at 83,311.01. The Nifty dipped 87.95 points, or 0.34%, to 25,509.70.