Sensex falls 670 pts amid sell-off in banking stocks

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], May 5 : Heavy sell-off in financial and banking heavyweights made a dent in the domestic benchmark indices on Friday. It was also observed in IT and metal stocks as investors went for profit-booking.

Sensex dropped 670 points and settled at 61,054.29 while NSE Nifty lost 186 points to end at 18,069 on Friday.

Among the constituents, Federal Bank shares fell 8.36 per cent, HDFC Bank shed 5.91 per cent and IndusInd Bank dropped 5.40 per cent on Friday. In other indices, Nifty Bank index slid 2.34 per cent and Nifty Financial Services index slid 2.34 per cent on the day.

In Asian markets, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 100 points, S&P ASX was up 24 points, Japan's Nikkei went up 34 points and Shanghai dropped 696 points on Friday.

In US markets, Dow Jones rose 286 points, Nasdaq and NYSE were trading in the green and S&P was down 29 points.

In European markets, BEL went up 35 points, CAC surged 31 points, FTSE 100 rose 32 points and Deutsche Borse gained 123 points when the Asian markets opened on Friday.

The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday decided to raise the key interest rates by 25 basis points (100 basis points makes 1 percentage points). Raising interest rates typically help in cooling demand in the economy and thus helps in managing inflation.

The ECB has hiked rates repeatedly since July last year to rein in high inflation. Prior to the latest hike, the extent of the hike was 50 basis points. In its monetary policy statement, the ECB said the inflation outlook continues to be "too high for too long".

Keeping inflation in view, S&P Global Market Intelligence in a note said clues on the direction that other central banks will take will meanwhile be drawn from the series of inflation figures due in the coming week for the US, mainland China and India.

"Notably, a further acceleration in US inflation is expected with the April release. The extent to which price inflation picked up, and which categories recorded the fastest increases, will be eagerly watched," it added.

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