BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian shares fell for a second straight week on Friday, as hawkish comments from major central banks fuelled worries about a possible global recession.
The Nifty 50 index and the S&P BSE Sensex logged weekly losses of 1.23% and 1.36%, respectively – their biggest declines since September.
On Friday, the Nifty 50 closed 0.79% lower at 18,269, and the S&P BSE Sensex fell 0.75% to 61,337.81.
“The commentary from global central banks this week has been the pain point for markets,” said Siddhartha Khemka, head of retail research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
Shadowing the U.S. Federal Reserve’s hawkish commentary on Wednesday, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England signalled a prolonged rate-hike cycle on Thursday, raising fears about the potential damage to the global economy.
Both the ECB and BoE raised their key interest rates by 50 basis points.
The Nifty 50 closed below the key support level of 18,400 on Friday.
“The next support level for the index would be 50-day simple moving average or 18,100-18,000 levels,” said Amol Athawale, deputy vice president – technical research at Kotak Securities.
All the heavily-weighted domestic sectors fell, with pharma leading the declines, followed by IT and auto. All the three sub-indexes fell more than 1%.
(Graphic: Nifty posts steepest weekly decline since September 30, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/WEEK-DEC16/DEC16-WEEK/lgvdkkjoapo/chart.png)
The Nifty 50 is likely to see muted gains in 2023 due to high domestic valuations and risks of spillovers from a potential global recession, Nomura said in a note.
Forty-five of the Nifty 50 constituents fell, with Adani Ports, Mahindra & Mahindra , Bharat Petroleum , Asian Paints and Dr Reddy’s leading the losses, shedding over 2%.
Sugar stocks bucked the trend after the Indian government said it would consider additional sugar exports in January.
($1 = 82.8600 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Eileen Soreng)
