Mumbai Bureau. Dalal Street opened the week on a weak note on Monday, as investors booked profits at higher levels after Friday’s sharp rebound. The BSE Sensex slipped 547.65 points, or 0.76%, to close at 71,924.68, while the NSE Nifty 50 shed 157.10 points, or 0.70%, to end at 22,363.35. The Bank Nifty fell 338.65 points, or 0.61%, to 54,918.00. The India VIX — the market’s fear gauge — spiked 7.16% to 13.83, a clear sign of rising anxiety. The Sensex ended the session nearly 950 points below its intraday high.
Winners and losers
Dr Reddy’s Laboratories led the Nifty gainers with a 2.71% jump, followed by Bajaj Auto at 2.62% and Bharat Electronics at 1.56%. The Nifty Auto index was the lone major sector in the green, up 0.90%. Pharma and FMCG led the decline — Apollo Hospitals sank 3.15%, ITC tumbled 3.05% and Tech Mahindra dropped 2.85%, with Larsen & Toubro and Max Healthcare down over 2% each. Nifty FMCG was the weakest sector, falling about 1.8%, while IT and PSU bank shares saw selling of up to 1.5%. Breadth was deeply negative: 37 Nifty constituents fell and only 13 rose.
Why the market was under pressure
Friday’s 1.30% rally had lifted the Nifty to 22,520.45, breaking a streak of losses — Monday was textbook profit booking on that bounce. The Reserve Bank’s latest steps also weighed heavily: it opened a special dollar window for oil marketing companies, announced a Rs 25,000-crore bond sale and tightened liquidity, pushing the 10-year bond yield to its highest since March 2023. This came days after the RBI raised the repo rate to 5.50%. Foreign investors sold for an 11th straight session, and Brent crude hovered around $103 a barrel. The rupee recovered 95 paise to 95.78 per dollar on central-bank intervention, but the mood in equities stayed sour.
What analysts say
Analysts see 22,000–22,200 as the key support zone for the Nifty — a break below could deepen the sell-off, while a move above 22,650 is needed for the uptrend to resume. For the Bank Nifty, 53,800–54,000 is the crucial cushion. Strategists caution that volatility is likely to stay elevated in the coming weeks.
What lies ahead
No major pre-scheduled macro event is lined up for the next two trading days — the RBI’s next policy meeting is in December (December 2–4), and the US Federal Reserve meets on October 27–28. All eyes will now be on the provisional FII/DII figures for Monday due on Tuesday. On Friday, foreign investors sold shares worth Rs 3,568.90 crore while domestic institutions bought Rs 4,743.26 crore. In the primary market, the HD Fire Protect IPO opens on October 13.
Photo: Nsewebmaster / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) — National Stock Exchange, Exchange Plaza, Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai
