Sensex falls nearly 500 points in opening trade amid weak global cues; Nifty below 16,450 – Times of India

Top laggards in the sensex pack included Tata Steel, Kotak Bank, Dr Reddy’s, L&T, SBI and Bajaj Finance. (Representative image)

NEW DELHI: Equity indices plunged in opening trade on Friday with the benchmark BSE sensex falling nearly 500 points amid weak cues from global markets.
The 30-share BSE index plunged 495 points or 0.89 per cent to trade at 55,135. While, the broader NSE Nifty was down 436 points or 0.9 per cent at 16,419.
Top laggards in the sensex pack included Tata Steel, Kotak Bank, Dr Reddy’s, L&T, SBI and Bajaj Finance with their stocks down as much as 3.77 per cent.
Whereas Asian Paints, Maruti, Infosys, Bharti Airtel and HUL were the stocks trading in green, up as much as 1.1 per cent.
On the NSE platform, except for Nifty IT, all other sub-indices were trading in red with Nifty Metal, Bank, Media, PSU Bank down up to 3 per cent.
According to experts, domestic markets were weighed down by subdued global cues.
Asian stocks were down 0.75 per cent, with Chinese blue chips 1.22 per cent lower, Hong Kong was down 0.53 per cent.
Japan’s Nikkei was down 0.53 per cent, while the US markets ended flat on Thursday.
Global markets are down mainly over concerns on rising cases of Delta Covid variant, which might pose a threat to global economy recovery again.