Indian equity benchmarks tumbled on Friday to finish the week with a loss of three percent, dragged by weakness across sectors barring IT shares. Financial stocks, especially PSU banks, were the biggest drags for the headline indices, besides oil & gas, FMCG and auto counters. Among blue-chip counters, ITC and the Bajaj twins were the worst hit, falling 7-9 percent for the week.

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For the week ended December 17, the Sensex shed 1,774.9 points and the Nifty50 lost 526.1 points to the lowest closing levels in nine sessions.

Broader markets also took a hit, with the Nifty Midcap 100 index dropping 4.1 percent and its smallcap counterpart 3.6 percent.

D-Street this week

Focus turned to more hawkish major central banks as the Bank of England hiked key interest rates after its United States counterpart's announcement of three increases in 2022. The BoE became the first central bank of an advanced economy to tighten the monetary policy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said consumer demand, the labour market, and overall economic conditions in the US are "hot". He acknowledged strong aggregate demand in the US economy, which has been expanding at a "robust pace".

The market tumbled after initial gains following the US central bank announcements.

"Apart from the hawkish stance by the US central bank, the news of sharp rise in COVID cases globally turned the participants cautious... The announcement of policy tightening by the Fed has not gone well with the participants especially when the global economy is again under the shadow of the new COVID variant," said Ajit Mishra, VP Research at Religare Broking.

Concerns about accelerating inflation and repercussions of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 for the financial markets kept investors on the back foot.

Expensive valuations were in focus once again on Dalal Street as the headline indices bled amid weakness across most spaces.

Foreign institutional investors remained bearish on the Indian market, dumping shares steadily. They are on track to finish a third straight month of net withdrawals from Indian equities.

Foreign investors have net sold Indian equities worth Rs 13,470 crore ($1.8 billion) in December so far, according provisional exchange data.

ALSO READ: FIIs net sellers in Indian shares, Dec could be 3rd month of outflows

Winners and losers

The Nifty Bank and Nifty Private Bank indices fell around four percent each, and the Nifty PSU Bank plunged 7.8 percent.

On the other hand, the IT gauge climbed up two percent.

As many as 42 stocks in the Nifty50 universe emerged weekly laggards.

Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, ITC, HDFC Life, IndusInd Bank and Bharti Airtel were the top losers. On the other hand, Wipro, Power Grid, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and Sun Pharma were the top gainers.

Shriram Transport Finance, Vodafone Idea, Hindustan Zinc, IDBI Bank Suzlon, falling around 13-15 percent each, were among the top laggards in the midcap and smallcap gauges. On the other hand, Mphasis, Pfizer, Adani Gas, Bajaj Electricals and Zensar, climbing between two percent and 16.7 percent, were among the top gainers.

Around 425 stocks in the BSE 500 -- the broadest gauge on the bourse -- finished the week with losses.

First Published:Dec 18, 2021 9:14 PM IST