Sensex crashes 1,100 points from day's high levels
What's the story
India's benchmark indices, Sensex and Nifty, witnessed a major fall from their day's high on June 1. At the time of writing, Sensex was down by 508.4 point to 74,267 while Nifty dropped 165 points to 23,382 points. The intraday high of Sensex was 75,367 while that of Nifty was 23,733. The decline is attributed to several factors including uncertainty over US-Iran peace deal and heavy selling by foreign institutional investors (FIIs).
Global influence
US-Iran ceasefire deal yet to be finalized
The market has been impacted by the uncertainty surrounding a proposed 60-day ceasefire deal between the US and Iran. President Donald Trump has not yet approved the deal but is not in a hurry to finalize it. He said "most of the agreement" with Tehran was about nuclear issues and that he is pushing for a deal ensuring Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.
Market sell-off
Foreign investors sold shares worth ₹21,106 crore
On Friday, foreign investors sold shares worth ₹21,106 crore, provisional data shows. The sale was mainly due to MSCI's May index rebalancing that came into effect around 3:00pm IST on Friday. Goldman Sachs had estimated the index rejig would trigger outflows of about $870 million from Indian equities. Despite the market fluctuations, Friday's session saw a record turnover at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of ₹2.87 lakh crore, according to exchange data.