Sensex, Nifty Snap Six-Week Losing Streak As Bargain Hunters Return

Indian equity benchmarks closed higher on Monday, finally breaking a six-week losing streak that had been the longest run of weekly declines for the market in roughly six years, as easing crude oil prices and steady domestic buying helped restore some confidence after a bruising stretch for investors.

The Sensex climbed 564.03 points, or 0.76%, to end at 74,858.99, while the Nifty 50 added 67.90 points, or 0.29%, to close at 23,414.30. Both indices had spent the better part of the last month and a half grinding lower under the weight of persistent foreign selling, elevated crude prices tied to the Iran standoff, and jittery global cues.

What Snapped The Slide

Monday's rebound was helped along by Brent crude easing roughly 2% during the session to around $101.6-101.7 a barrel, taking some pressure off a market that had been rattled for weeks by fears that a costlier oil import bill would stoke inflation, weigh on the rupee and squeeze corporate margins. With prices retreating from recent highs, bargain hunters stepped back into beaten-down names, particularly in the pharmaceutical, realty and FMCG spaces, which led sectoral gains through the day. IT stocks were the notable laggards, with the Nifty IT index slipping around 1% even as the broader market advanced.

Flow data told a similarly two-sided story. Foreign institutional investors remained net sellers in Monday's cash segment, offloading a net Rs 576.20 crore worth of Indian shares, extending a selling streak that had pulled roughly Rs 7,619.69 crore out of the market over the preceding week alone. Domestic institutional investors, however, more than offset that selling, buying a net Rs 2,797.30 crore worth of stocks in the cash segment, continuing the pattern of steady domestic support that has repeatedly cushioned the market during bouts of foreign outflows this year.

A Long Losing Run, Finally Broken

The six consecutive weekly declines that preceded Monday's session had left both benchmarks meaningfully off their recent highs, with the streak widely cited by market commentators as the worst run for Indian equities since 2020. Elevated crude prices tied to repeated attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a stalled Iran-US standoff, and broader nervousness around global interest rates had all weighed on sentiment through the period.

Money also moved around within the market itself on Monday, with NSE's own blockbuster initial public offering wrapping up its subscription window during the session, in a stark illustration of how the country's largest-ever exchange listing pulled bidding capital away from secondary market trades even as the benchmarks rallied.

Gold and silver, meanwhile, gave back some recent gains on Monday, with prices easing on MCX as the softer crude and firmer risk appetite reduced some of the safe-haven demand that had driven bullion to repeated highs in recent weeks. Investors tracking daily prices can check the latest gold rate today for city-wise figures.

With the losing streak now broken, traders will be watching whether Monday's bounce marks a genuine turnaround or merely a pause, given that the underlying drivers of recent weakness, from Gulf shipping tensions to the direction of global crude prices, remain largely unresolved heading into the new week.

This is an original summary based on public reporting. See our editorial policy for how we source, write, and correct our stories.