The Indian stock market took a massive hit as an intense wave of panic-selling wiped out over INR 5,000,000,000,000 ($53 billion) in investor wealth in just one hour.
According to real-time tracking data provided by India Infoline and the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), the brutal intraday crash comes on the heels of a miserable month for the country’s equity markets, which have seen an estimated INR 16.83 trillion in market value vanish. This ongoing slide has officially pushed India down to 7th place globally in total market capitalisation.
The biggest trigger behind the sharp drop was a massive sell-off in the tech sector. As reported by Business Today India, the Nifty IT index plunged by more than 5.5 percent, completely wiping out the gains from a short-lived, AI-driven rally earlier in the week.
Industry giants took a serious beating; Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) crashed by over 7.5 percent, while Infosys Limited (one of the Big Six IT companies of India) slid by 3.27 percent and Tech Mahindra dropped around 6 percent.
Adding to the local panic were growing global pressures. International crude oil prices spiked toward $97 a barrel due to fresh geopolitical tensions between the US and Iran, fueling inflation worries for import-heavy India.
On top of that, overnight weakness in the American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) of major Indian tech companies piled on the pressure.
While domestic banking stocks tried to resist the trend, with the Nifty Bank index actually surging 471 points it wasn’t nearly enough to fight off the heavy institutional profit-taking and massive capital outflows.
Interestingly, Business Today India highlighted that the market managed to claw back nearly 850 points from its lowest morning drop before the final bell, showing some late-day resilience after a truly historic hour of panic on Dalal Street.
