Indian stocks lose momentum as Sensex falls over 250 points to 76,251 amid US-Iran tensions
India's major stock indices continued their weekly decline driven by rising oil prices linked to geopolitical conflicts, even though corporate earnings remained strong. Tech companies and banks led the drop while small-cap stocks lagged.
Indian equity markets recorded a four-week losing streak on Monday as Sensex slipped over 250 points to close at 76,251 and Nifty fell more than 79 points to reach 23,818. The downward trend began early in the trading session at 9:22 AM when fresh escalation in the US-Iran conflict pushed oil prices higher. This geopolitical pressure weighed on investor sentiment despite supportive economic data and positive corporate earnings trends. The IT sector faced significant pressure with Infosys, HCLTech, Tech Mahindra and TCS shares declining between 1% and 2%. Bank and consumer goods stocks also underperformed with Axis Bank and Hindustan Unilever down by 0.5%. Conversely, BEL, Bajaj Finance and Bharti Airtel managed to record marginal gains. Sector performance highlights included Nifty IT dropping more than 1% while metals declined around 0.6%. Market breadth turned negative as the National Stock Exchange saw 1,612 declines compared to 1,206 advances. VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Investments, suggested that worsening Middle East tensions and elevated crude prices are driving the continued downtrend.
