Sensex sinks 550 pts on rate hike worries; Nifty below 17,700

On the back of weak international cues ahead of the release of the FOMC meeting minutes, the domestic equity market opened on a weak note. Sensex was trading lower by over 550 points and Nifty slipped below the 17,700 mark.

All sectoral indices were trading lower with Nifty IT down over 1%. Adani stocks continued to be under selling pressure with 10 counters in the red zone.

Among Sensex stocks, Wipro, IndusInd Bank, and Ultratech Cement were lower by over 1%. On the other hand, L&T, Sun Pharma, and Maruti were trading marginally higher.

Adani Enterprises was the top loser in the Nifty pack and was down 3.7%.

Experts View
"The US macro data continues to dictate equity markets globally. The US markets reacted sharply negatively to the series of economic data indicating that the process of disinflation is slow and, therefore, the Fed will have to continue raising rates longer than expected earlier," V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services said.

Investors should ignore these short-terminations and focus on slowly accumulating high-quality growth stocks that will bounce back smartly when the present near-term gyrations die down, Vijayakumar suggested.

Devarsh Vakil, Deputy Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities said, "Support for the Nifty is seen at its previous swing low of 17719, below which bearish trend would find momentum. Resistance has shifted down to 18000 odd levels in the Nifty."

Global Markets
Wall Street stocks finished decisively lower on Tuesday as angst over more Federal Reserve interest rate hikes in the pipeline added to the hit from retailers' lackluster forecasts.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 2.1% lower to 33,130. The broad-based S&P 500 shed 2% to 3,997, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 2.5% to 11,492. Asian share markets followed Wall Street into the red on Wednesday as surprising strength in global surveys of services stoked fears that central banks would have to lift interest rates yet further and keep them up for longer. Japan's Nikkei share index fell 1.29%. China's benchmark shed 0.25% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index dropped down 0.27%.

Crude Price
Oil prices were down on Wednesday as investors await the US Federal Reserve's comments on interest rates hikes. Brent crude futures for April delivery were down 0.14% to $82.93 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for April were down 0.17% to $76.22 a barrel.

Rupee Weakens
The Indian rupee fell by 3 paise to 82.82 against the US dollar in early trade. The dollar index, which tracks the movement of the greenback against a basket of six major world currencies, declined 0.06% to 104.11 level.

(With inputs from agencies)