Nifty 50 goes below 17,000-mark on rising Omicron cases, fear of lockdown

• The Indian benchmark indices dropped nearly 2% on fears of rising Omicron cases while the market awaits RBI’s monetary policy decision on December 8.
• Sensex fell more than 950 points led by losses in shares of IT stocks, auto stocks.
• IndusInd Bank, Tata Consumer Products, Bajaj Finserv, TCS, HCL Tech were the top five losers in Nifty 50.

Sudden rise in cases of COVID-19 variant Omicron across India has spooked investors in the market over another lockdown and slowdown in economic activity.

Following this, Indian indices -- Sensex and Nifty 50 -- were down nearly 2%.

Currently, India has 21 cases of the new variant out of which 17 were detected on December 5.

“If this virus quickly spreads in India, then the market will be volatile for the upcoming next two weeks, along with that any further development on the effectiveness of vaccines on [the] new virus [strain] will be key monitorable [sic] for Indian markets,” said Yash Gupta, equity research analyst at Angel One.

Here are the top losers on Nifty 50:

At the same time, market participants awaited the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy outcome on December 8. Media reports said that RBI may maintain status quo on the repo rate at 4% and the stance being ‘accommodative’.

Since the variant was first detected in South Africa, it has spread to more than two dozen countries, including Asian nations like Sri Lanka, India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.

Indian indices were not the only ones fearing the new variant, market sentiment was weak across Asian and the US markets.

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Indian government is reportedly looking to regularise work from home with a comprehensive framework