Bears Tighten Grip on Dalal Street - Sensex Plunges Below 76,000, Nifty Slides to 23,700 Amid US-Iran Conflict, Soaring Crude

Indian equity benchmarks extended their four-week losing streak on Monday as severe global macro headwinds triggered aggressive selling. The BSE Sensex dropped over 500 points, breaching the critical 76,000 mark, while the NSE Nifty 50 shed more than 150 points to settle around 23,742. The sell-off was fueled by intensifying US-Iran military hostilities, elevated crude prices, spiking US bond yields, fresh bets on Fed rate hikes, and relentless FII selling.

The primary trigger remains the escalating standoff in West Asia, where military flare-ups have heightened maritime risks around the Strait of Hormuz. With crude prices surging on supply disruption fears, import-heavy economies like India face risks of imported inflation, wider trade deficits, and pressure on the rupee. Compounding this, resilient US economic data has fueled expectations that the Fed will maintain a hawkish stance or raise rates further, pushing up US 10-year Treasury yields and making dollar debt more attractive -accelerating foreign capital flight from domestic equities.

On the sectoral front, IT stocks dragged the indices down, led by a sharp 4% slide in Infosys amid worries over delayed enterprise tech spending and a US corporate earnings slowdown. Tech heavyweights and large-cap financials absorbed the bulk of institutional selling. In contrast, the broader market showed resilience - while mid-caps followed benchmarks into the red, the Nifty Smallcap 100 bucked the trend with marginal gains, reflecting selective domestic buying even as frontline indices reeled under macro stress.