The BSE Sensex opened at 77,272.34 after closing at 77,616.40 on Monday, and by half past ten in the morning it was down around 522 points, or 0.67 percent, at 77,093.Nifty50 wasn't spared either, opening at 24,068 against its previous close of 24,211 and slipping 143 points to 24,067.Wall Street didn't help matters.The Dow closed down 0.3 percent, the S&P 500 dropped 0.8 percent, and the Nasdaq tumbled 1.6 percent on Monday night.The Sensex fell as much as seven hundred points at one point during the morning, touching an intraday low near 76,857, before clawing back some of that loss.All this comes right as companies start reporting first quarter earnings for the new financial year, and investors were already a bit jumpy about that even before Iran entered the picture, and traders here woke up to news that President Trump had brought back a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, along with a proposed 20 percent toll on cargo passing through it for ships that aren't Iranian. Investors hate that kind of uncertainty, and honestly, who doesn't.
HCL Technologies took the hardest hit among Nifty names,sliding more than three percent to ₹1,183.20, while Shriram Finance, IndiGo, Bajaj Finance and Mahindra & Mahindra all fell too. And metal and energy stocks bucked the trend, posting gains even as the broader market sank.Foreign investors kept pulling money out even as domestic institutions bought the dip, and the rupee slipped further against the dollar.Brent crude, meanwhile, pushed past 85 dollars a barrel, adding fresh pressure on a market still trying to figure out how far the standoff over that narrow shipping lane near Iran will go.
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