India Stocks: Indian share benchmarks set for longest weekly losing run in 25 years
INDIA STOCKS-Indian share benchmarks set for longest weekly losing run in 25 years Updates for morning trade
By Bharath Rajeswaran and Vivek Kumar M
Oct 1 (Reuters) - Indian equities inched lower on Thursday as persistent foreign outflows continued to weigh on risk sentiment, with the benchmarks on course for the eighth straight weekly loss, their longest such streak in 25 years.
On the day, the Nifty 50 .NSEI was down 0.28% at 22,558.95, while the BSE Sensex .BSESN fell 0.12% to 72,389.51, as of 9:44 a.m. IST.
Indian markets will be closed on Friday for a local holiday.
Foreign investors sold Indian shares worth $1.06 billion on Wednesday, as per provisional data. They offloaded about $3.6 billion in the previous five sessions, taking their year-to-date selling to a record $27.8 billion.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 slipped to around $97 a barrel after Tehran said it had received Washington's response to its latest ceasefire proposal. Days earlier, US President Donald Trump said he had rejected the proposal. O/R
"With markets to be closed tomorrow, the session is seeing cautious positioning ahead of the extended break," said Hariselvan Radhakrishnan, founder and CEO of HST Wealth.
"Foreign outflows and elevated borrowing costs continue to weigh on sentiment even if a drop in crude offers some relief after the recent surge in energy prices."
Eleven of the 16 major sectors declined. The broader small-caps .NIFSMCP100 and mid-caps .NIFMDCP100 fell 0.6% and 0.3%, respectively.
Auto index .NIFTYAUTO fell 2.4%. Bajaj Auto BAJA.NS dropped 6% and Mahindra & Mahindra MAHM.NS lost 2.4% as they logged a decline in domestic sales.
The IT index .NIFTYIT gained 0.9%, as data showed a slower-than-expected rise in US inflation in August that lessens the probability of a rate hike later this month.
Kotak Mahindra Bank KTKM.NS rose 3% after the lender appointed Anup Kumar Saha as its new CEO for a three-year term, succeeding Ashok Vaswani.
(Reporting by Vivek Kumar M and Bharath Rajeswaran; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Janane Venkatraman)
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