Markets open weak; Sensex drops 174 points while Nifty dips 56 points

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 4 : The equity market opened weak and then traded in the negative territory on Wednesday morning, tracking weak global cues. The investors were on wait-and-watch mode in morning trade, anticipating the minutes of the US Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting which were due later on Wednesday.
BSE Sensex declined 174 points to 61,119.75 while NSE Nifty50 dropped 56 points to 18,175.75 at 9.46 am local time on Wednesday morning.
Some of the stocks active on BSE that went up were Jindal World, Equitas Bank, Surya Rosni, NFL and RCF. Bajaj Hindusthan Sugar, National Aluminium, Hindalco, Jindal Saw and Lloyd Steel were some of the laggards.
HDFC Life, Sun Pharma, SBI Life, Divis Lab and ICICI Bank were some of the active stocks that went up on BSE while Hindalco, JSW Steel, Tata Steel, ONGC and Tata Motors were some of the laggards on NSE. In Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei was down 369 points, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 409 points, China's Shanghai SE surged 9 points while S&P ASX was up 99 points on early session on Wednesday.
In European markets, FTSE 100 settled 102 points down, CAC 40 was trading in the green, Deutsche Borse was up 112 while Refinitiv Europe was trading in the red.
In American markets, Dow Jones settled with 10 points down, Nasdaq Composite declined 79 points, S&P 500 was 15 points down while Refinitiv United States settled in the red on Tuesday while the Asian markets opened.
The S&P BSE Sensex on Tuesday surged 126.41 points and settled at 61,294.20. The Nifty 50 index added 35.10 points to 18,232.55.
Among the most active stocks on Tuesday, shares of HDFC Life Insurance Company went up 4.54 per cent, SBI Life Insurance Company surged 2.22 per cent, Axis Bank went up 2.21 per cent and Titan Company were up 2.07 on NSE.
On Tuesday, the NSE's India VIX, a gauge of the market's expectation of volatility over the near term, slipped 2.04% to 14.39.
Maruti Suzuki India fell 0.23 per cent on Tuesday after automobile giant said its total production fell 17.96 per cent to 1,24,722 units in December 2022 compared with 152,029 units in December 2021.
Zomato fell 2.24 per cent on Tuesday, after the food delivery platform informed that its co-founder and chief technology officer, Gunjan Patidar, resigned on Monday.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) fell 1.23 per cent on Tuesday after an operational creditor filed Rs 211.41-crore insolvency case against the company towards royalty payable for utilization of "literary and musical works".