A huge fall in the overnight US indices followed by a sell-off in the global markets led to the Indian benchmarks shed close to a per cent each on Thursday with the Sensex falling below the psychological 34,000 mark.
At 1:15pm, the sensex was trading at 33,736.76, down 297.20 points or 0.87%. The broader Nifty was at 10,134.50, down 90.25 points or 0.88%.
Almost all the sectoral indices were also deep in the red with the market breadth extremely weak. On BSE, more than 1,600 stocks declined as against only 667 gainers.
The sensex pack saw stocks like State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Adani Ports, Bharti Airtel and Vedanta all lose more than 2% each.
Market participants are concerned that factors like the ongoing trade war between the US and China along with rate hikes in the US could potentially lead to a global slowdown thereby affecting markets across asset class especially equities.
Incidentally, foreign portfolio investors have been selling Indian shares in huge quantity in the current month with their net selling pegged at over $3 billion.
Elsewhere in Asia, Nikkei was trading nearly 4% lower while Hang Seng was down nearly 2%. The overnight Dow Jones lost more than 600 points or 2.41% on Wednesday.