Mumbai, Oct 5 (IANS) The Reserve Bank of India's new policy stance of "calibrated tightening", along with a weak rupee and uncertainty in global trade, hit the key Indian equity indices, which crashed by over 2 per cent each on Friday.
Additionally, a massive outflow of foreign funds, high crude oil prices and fears over fiscal slippage led the indices' downward trajectory.
Index-wise, the Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange closed at 10,316.45 points, down 282.80 points or 2.67 per cent from its previous close.
On a similar note, the S&P BSE Sensex ended the day's trade deep in the red. It opened at 35,097.99 points and closed at 34,376.99 points, down 792.17 points or 2.25 per cent from its previous close.
It touched an intra-day high of 35,118.54 points and a low of 34,202.22 points.
Lately, a weak rupee and high crude oil prices have plunged the Sensex by over 2,000 points in only three previous trading sessions, while the Nifty50 has shed over 650 points.
In the broader markets, the S&P BSE Mid-cap index declined 2.70 per cent, while the S&P BSE Small-cap index slipped 2.02 per cent, from their previous close.
"Status quo policy was quite surprising while under shooting inflation and recent fuel tax cut may give some leeway to the cautious sentiment," said Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services.
"However, rupee weakened further and market dived to lower lows as risk of fiscal deficit and rise in US bond yield still impacting the outflow of foreign money."
According to Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities: "Markets corrected sharply on Friday with the Nifty closing in the red for the third consecutive session."
"The slide was led by index pivotals Reliance, HDFC and ITC. Oil and gas stocks too fell sharply. Weak global cues and RBI changing its stance to calibrated tightening affected the market sentiments."
In a surprise move, the RBI belied market expectations of a rate hike, which was expected to arrest the free-fall in the rupee's value.
However, the "neutral" stance of monetary policy was changed to "calibrated tightening".
On the currency front, the Indian rupee closed at 73.77 (73.7675) per US dollar, 19 paise weaker from its previous close of 73.58. It crashed to a low of 74.22 earlier in the day.
Investment-wise, provisional data with the exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors sold stocks worth Rs 3,370.14 crore and domestic institutional investors bought stocks worth Rs 1,902.07 crore.
The only gainers at the Sensex were Infosys, up 2.19 per cent at Rs 721.85; Tata Consultancy Services, up 1.88 per cent at Rs 2,103.10; IndusInd Bank, up 1.36 per cent at Rs 1,609.90; HDFC Bank, up 0.10 per cent at Rs 1,962.85.
On the other hand, major losers included ONGC, down 15.93 per cent at Rs 146.95; Reliance Industies, down 6.31 per cent at Rs 1,049.85; State Bank of India, down 4.73 per cent at Rs 257.80; Adani Ports, down 4.40 per cent at Rs 302.05; and Bharti Airtel, down 4.27 per cent at Rs 296.75 per share.
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