Indian shares opened lower on Thursday amid sustained
foreign selling, tracking a slide in global equities after the
latest inflation indicators in the United States underlined the
possibility of a prolonged high-interest rate regime.
The Nifty 50 index fell 0.42% to 17,378.55, while the S&P BSE Sensex edged 0.42% lower to 59,159.40 as of 9:36 a.m. IST. Nine of the 13 major sectoral indexes declined with high weightage information technology losing over 1%.
The slide in Indian equities comes after two of the three major Wall Street indexes fell overnight as official U.S. data showed prices of raw materials rose in February, implying inflation remained at elevated levels.
The data heightened worries about the longer-than-expected high-interest rate regime in the United States. Asian markets declined on Thursday, with the MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan shedding 0.10%. Meanwhile, foreign institutional investors (FII) offloaded a net 4.25 billion rupees worth of equities on Wednesday. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have sold a net 387.89 billion rupees ($4.70 billion) worth of Indian equities thus far into the year. Among individual stocks, Rail Vikas Nigam climbed nearly 8% after emerging as the lowest bidder to make and maintain 200 Vande Bharat trainsets. The cost per set is 1.20 billion rupees. Bajaj Finserv rose nearly 3% on getting a regulatory license to start a mutual fund business. ($1 = 82.4900 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru;Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Dhanya Ann Thoppil)
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