The Nifty 50 fell nearly 400 points, while the Sensex fell 1,000. The pain was felt in the broader markets with the Nifty Midcap index declining nearly 2,000 points and the Smallcap index shaving off over 4%.
The sell-off in the broader markets have resulted in an erosion of ₹11 lakh crore in the combined market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies on Friday.
Indian benchmark indices fell after the Dow Jones fell 1,700 points overnight. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 5% and 6% respectively, leading to a loss of $2.5 trillion in market capitalisation.
Pharma companies, which were outperformers on Thursday, were among the top losers on Friday after US President Trump warned the sector of ‘never seen before’ tariffs. Metals also continued to sell-off despite a weaker dollar, while the weakness in crude oil prices had no bearing on Oil Marketing Companies like HPCL and BPCL which still traded lower.
However, the collapse in oil prices took shares of upstream oil explorers ONGC and Oil India lower by almost 8%.
“I see this as an opportunity. And if you go back into our 20-30, year history, whenever there is turmoil in global markets, and if you buy Indian stocks in two, three years down the line, you get exceptionally good returns,” Dipan Mehta of Elixir Equities said.
“So if you are sitting on cash, you have not taken advantage of this recent rally, which has come through, then this is a great time to invest. And I think investors should consider the history. Whenever there is turmoil and you have bought, you have always made a very good return,” he added.