Equities on downward slide amid global trade tensions

Equity benchmark indices continued their downward slide during early hours on Friday amid ongoing concern that trade frictions may jeopardise global economic growth.

Except for IT and metal, all sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) traded lower. The losses were more pronounced in energy, FMCG, pharma and private banks.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S & P Sensex was down 105 points at 39,636 while the Nifty 50 dipped 38 points to 11,876.

Among stocks, Jet Airways sank further by 11.15 per cent to Rs 81.70 per share. The NSE said recently that shares of the grounded airline will be removed from daily trading of futures and options from June 28.

Indiabulls Housing Finance slipped 2.5 per cent while Yes Bank was down 1.5 per cent after a series of downgrades in recent weeks by global rating agencies. Dr Reddy and Bajaj Auto also dropped over 1 per cent.

Those which showed marginal gains were Vedanta, Power Grid, Bharti Infratel, Wipro and Tata Steel.

Meanwhile, Asian stocks were subdued as investors awaited key Chinese data that could shed some light on how heavily the US-China trade war is weighing on the economy.

There are growing concerns that tariff disputes could escalate into a full-blown trade war that could push the global economy into recession.