Indian equities fell on Friday as a jump in crude prices and a weakening rupee kept buyers away. The Nifty lost 102.15 points, or 0.4 percent, to close at 23,767.45. The Sensex fell 331.6 points, also 0.4 percent, to 76,059.77. Both had been down as much as 1.2 percent before recovering through the afternoon.
Shrikant Chouhan, head of equity research at Kotak Securities, pointed to a combination of global and domestic pressures on sentiment, including the crude spike and the rupee's continued depreciation. He also noted the rise in the US ten year Treasury yield to 4.71 percent, its highest in several months, as adding to investor concern.
The oil move is the immediate cause. Brent September futures were around 97.5 dollars a barrel on Friday, having gone above 100 for the first time since May after Yemen's Houthi movement said its forces attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea and the United States carried out further strikes on Iran. Dharmesh Shah, head of technical research at ICICI Securities, said intraday losses narrowed as crude eased from about 101 dollars back to 97.
For the week the Sensex and Nifty each fell 2.3 percent, the sharpest weekly decline since early May and March respectively. The Nifty's volatility index rose 4.1 percent to 14.03. A close below 23,800 matters mostly to traders who use it as a reference level, but the underlying pressures, an oil import bill rising with Brent and a currency going the wrong way against it, are not chart patterns.