India’s stock market benchmark opened lower on Tuesday, the second day of its most significant drop in more than two months, weighed down by weakness in financials, IT and FMCG shares. Globally, investors remain on the back foot ahead of the latest news from the annual meeting of central bankers at the Jackson Hole Symposium this week.

The Sensex fell 601.4 points, or 1%, to hit its lowest level of 58,172.5 in the first few minutes of trading. The Nifty50 fell to 17,345.2 points, down 145.5 points or 0.8% from its previous close.

A total of 47 stocks in the Nifty50 basket opened lower. IndusInd, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Tata Motors and Cipla are the biggest laggards.

Wipro, HDFC Life, HDFC Bank, UPL, and TCS shares, down about 1% each, were also the biggest blue-chip losers.
On the other hand, ONGC, SBI Life, and Apollo Hospitals have barely achieved. All sectors were lower in early trade.

“The focus will be on what the Fed chair said at the Jackson Hole seminar. If he sounds less hawkish, there may be a relief rally. Otherwise, the current trend will continue. The US trend is very important for India because the correlation between the two markets is very high, said VK Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

“The sharp drop in Indian equities is also due to some profit-taking by domestic institutional investors who have been selling in recent days,” he said.

Domestic institutional investors began selling stocks on Monday, in line with the general trend of the past few months. Overall market breadth favoured bulls, with 1,983 BSE stocks advancing and 819 declining.