The accelerated sell-off has been courtesy of three factors:
Rising Oil Prices
Crude has continued to remain the pain point for Indian equities. Brent Crude is now near $102 per barrel. This is despite the IEA announcing the release of 400 million barrels of oil from its energy reserves and the US lifting sanctions on buying Russian oil stuck at sea.Both Iran and US have shown no signs of moving towards an off-ramp as the war continues in West Asia and that continues to support oil prices.
Goldman Sachs has warned that if the Strait of Hormuz continues to witness supply disruptions till the end of the month, oil prices could rise all the way to $150 per barrel.
Stronger Dollar
A stronger US Dollar is also hurting the global markets, particularly the Emerging Markets. The US Dollar index is now back above the mark of 100, hurting metal stocks.The Nifty Metal index is down over 4% on Friday, and over 5% for the week, with all the constituents of the index trading with losses.
A stronger USD is negative for metals as it makes the purchase of them unattractive to international buyers. The strength in the US Dollar has also sent the rupee tumbling to another record low.
Dow Futures Reverse
While the markets were selling off all through the morning, the only part that remained in the green were the Dow futures. However, from gains of close to 250 points around noon, the Dow futures have now reversed course and are down over 120 points as of 1:45 PM Indian time.
The Nifty is down 5.2% for the week with only 5 stocks trading with gains.
Eicher Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, L&T, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, UltraTech and Bajaj Finance are the worst performing stocks this week so far on the Nifty 50 index.
