Stock market index falls by 700 points due to widespread selling, causing Nifty to drop from its previous record high.

It was a rough day for the stock market as the Sensex, the benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange, fell over 700 points. This caused the index to drop below the 74,000 level, while the Nifty, the National Stock Exchange's index, also retreated from its record high. Investors were seen reducing their holdings in telecom, capital goods, and technology stocks, leading to heavy selling pressure in companies like Reliance Industries, L&T, and HDFC Bank.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 73,878.15, a decrease of 732.96 points or 0.98%. Earlier in the day, it had risen by 484.07 points, but ended up losing 1,627.45 points from its peak of 75,095.18. Similarly, the NSE Nifty dropped by 172.35 points or 0.76% to close at 22,475.85. It had touched a new high of 22,794.70 during early trade, with a gain of 146.5 points or 0.64%.

Several major companies, including Larsen & Toubro, Maruti, Reliance Industries, Nestle, Bharti Airtel, UltraTech Cement, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and JSW Steel, saw a decline in their stocks. However, Bajaj Finance managed to climb nearly 1% higher after the Reserve Bank of India lifted restrictions on the company's loan sanctioning and disbursal through eCOM and Insta EMI Card. This decision was announced by the company in a regulatory filing on Thursday. The central bank had previously directed Bajaj Finance to stop these services due to non-compliance with digital lending guidelines.

Some other companies that saw an increase in their stock prices were Bajaj Finserv, Mahindra & Mahindra, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, and Infosys. According to Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services, the market saw a correction due to profit-booking and cautiousness ahead of the release of the US non-farm payroll data. However, he believes that the downside may be mitigated by the absence of significant negative surprises in Q4 earnings and a decrease in oil prices.

It was a broad-based correction, with large-cap stocks being the worst performers. This was mainly due to a decline in foreign institutional investors' (FII) exposure to the Indian market. On Thursday, FIIs sold equities worth Rs 964.47 crore, as per exchange data. In other parts of the world, Hong Kong closed in the green while Seoul ended lower. Tokyo and Shanghai were closed for the holidays. In Europe, markets were trading in the green, while Wall Street ended the day with gains.

The global oil benchmark, Brent crude, saw a slight decline of 0.06% to $83.62 per barrel. On Thursday, the BSE benchmark had closed at 74,611.11, a gain of 128.33 points or 0.17%. Similarly, the NSE Nifty had gone up by 43.35 points or 0.19% to close at 22,648.20. This data was provided by the Press Trust of India (PTI).

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