Indian Shares End Off Day's Lows As Oil Prices Ease

(RTTNews) - Indian shares ended Friday's session lower as Middle East tensions persisted, and investors awaited key U.S. CPI data later in the day for additional clues on the Federal Reserve's rate trajectory.

Oil prices were on track for their biggest weekly advance since July, raising worries about India's import bill, inflation and earnings.

However, after crashing nearly 1 percent earlier in the session, benchmark indexes Sensex and Nifty sharply recovered most of their losses to end the day only with modest cuts.

The intra-day recovery came after a significant drop in oil prices in European trade. Brent crude futures fell more than 3 percent toward $104 a barrel in the afternoon after the International Energy Agency (IEA) cut its forecast for oil demand this year and reports suggested that Iran and Oman were meeting with Gulf states to reopen shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Financial Times reported that Gulf foreign ministers plan to meet their Iranian counterpart in the Omani coastal city of Salalah this coming Monday to secure a deal to manage commercial shipping through Hormuz.

The 30-share BSE Sensex ended the session down 120.84 points, or 0.16 percent, at 74,781.76, while the NSE Nifty index slid 79.70 points, or 0.34 percent, to 23,398.10.

The BSE mid-cap and small-cap indexes fell 0.4 percent and half a percent, respectively.

The market breadth was weak on the BSE, with 2,447 shares falling while 1,873 shares rose and 239 shares closed unchanged.

Among the prominent decliners, Mahindra & Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki India, Axis Bank, Larsen & Toubro, Power Grid Corp, NTPC, Bajaj Finance, Sun Pharma, Reliance Industries and Tata Steel fell 1-2 percent.

HDFC Bank rose about 2 percent after the High Civil Court in Bahrain rejected all seven cases filed against the bank by Credit Suisse AT1 bond investors.

Information technology stocks were in the spotlight, with Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra rising between 0.6 percent and 1.4 percent, after Wipro said its use of artificial intelligence has generated productivity gains equivalent to the output of approximately 20,000 employees.