The stock markets did not significantly react to US President Donald Trump’s imposition of 27% reciprocal tariff on the country’s exports. While both the benchmark indices opened sharply lower, they recouped more than half of their losses.
The Sensex closed at 76,295.36, down 322.08 points, or 0.42%, while the Nifty fell by 82.25 points, or 0.35%, to 23,250.10. The broader markets performed better, with the BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap delivering positive returns of 0.31% and 0.76%, respectively. The overall market breadth was positive with 2,813 gainers compared to 1,169 losers.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) continued their selling spree, offloading shares worth ₹2,806 crore, while domestic institutional investors net purchased shares worth ₹221.47 crore, according to provisional BSE data.
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Investor wealth rose by ₹35,170 crore to ₹413.3 lakh crore.
Among Asian markets, Indian indices were relatively less affected. Japan (down 2.8%), the Philippines (down 1.63%) and Hong Kong (down 1.5%) were the top losers. China, Thailand, South Korea and Malaysia reported losses of less than 1%. Equity indices in major European countries were trading nearly 3% lower.
Samir Arora of Helios Capital told television channels that the market’s behavior on Thursday seemed suspicious and unreliable. He pointed out that Indian markets have adopted a pattern of reacting to FII flows, rather than analysing individual stocks.
Arora said the resilience seemed excessive, as market reactions tend to be quick, even though real-world economic impacts take time to materialise. He advised waiting for two-three days to observe second and third-round effects.
From an economic perspective, he noted that tariffs might not have a significant impact since India’s import-export scale with the US isn’t large.
Swarup Mohanty, CEO of Mirae Asset Investment Managers, said while the tariff announcement will have a near-term impact, the overall Indian growth story remains intact. He added that the market is waiting for other triggers, including corporate earnings recovery and rupee movements. He expects a revival after a good monsoon, but believes it may take until the second half of the financial year to materialise.
Among sectors, IT was the worst performer as fears of a US economic slowdown, fuelled by new tariffs,
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