Sluggish trend continues on Markets amid US-Iran tensions

Indian equity markets continued to show a sluggish trend in morning deals, tracking a bearish trend in global equities and higher oil prices due to escalating conflict in West Asia. Sentiments remained down-beat as the RBI data showed that India’s current account deficit widened to $4.2 billion, or 0.5 per cent of GDP, in the first quarter of the current fiscal year from $3.4 billion, or 0.4 per cent of GDP a year ago. Traders overlooked exchange data showed Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) returned to buying Indian equities on September 1, recording net purchases of Rs 1,143.38 crore.

Sensex and Nifty were trading down by 490 points and 173 points, respectively with broad-based selling in heavyweight stocks. Auto stocks were the weakest, followed by Consumer Discretionary and Realty counters. On the global front, Asian markets were trading lower following the broadly negative cues from Wall Street overnight, as surging bond yields and higher crude oil prices amid renewed hostilities in the Middle East stoked global inflation risks and rate-hike fears. 

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 76453.87, down by 490.41 points or 0.64% after trading in a range of 76135.72 and 76521.67. There were 7 stocks advancing against 23 stocks declining on the index.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Energy up by 0.50%, Utilities up by 0.48%, Telecom up by 0.20% and PSU up by 0.11%, while Auto down by 1.99%, Consumer Discretionary down by 1.36%, Realty down by 1.29%, Consumer Durables down by 1.22% and Capital Goods down by 1.20% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Adani Ports &SEZ up by 1.02%, Axis Bank up by 0.43%, Power Grid up by 0.23%, State Bank Of India up by 0.15% and Sun Pharma up by 0.15%. On the flip side, Interglobe Aviation down by 2.51%, Asian Paints down by 1.70%, HDFC Bank down by 1.38%, HCL Technologies down by 1.34% and Bharat Electronics down by 1.29% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, IT industry body Nasscom, in its report titled 'Physical AI Redefining ER&D opportunity for India’, has said that India’s engineering research and development (ER&D) sector is expected to generate more than $100 billion in revenue by 2030, driven by the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into core engineering workflows. The sector, which is projected to generate $63 billion in revenue in FY26, is witnessing a significant shift as engineering becomes increasingly software-defined, data-driven and intelligent.

It suggests that demand will evolve in three waves. The first wave will see the scaling of intelligent products and operations, connected equipment and predictive maintenance. This will be followed by a surge in simulation, virtual engineering and intelligent manufacturing as companies move from experimentation to production. In the long term, it expects autonomous systems to emerge as the largest opportunity as barriers related to safety, reliability, compute, and real-world deployment are progressively addressed. 

The shift is also expected to unlock new revenue streams beyond traditional services, including AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS), Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS), leasing models and agentic deployments. Besides, it highlighted that India is well-positioned to emerge as a key engineering hub for the global market, building on its existing strengths in AI, embedded systems, automotive and industrial ER&D, simulation and data engineering.

Nasscom President Rajesh Nambiar said ‘India's ER&D growth will be shaped by how effectively we combine our engineering depth with AI to take on greater ownership of global product development’. He added ‘Physical AI adds an important new dimension to this opportunity. India has the engineering talent, domain expertise and scale to play a much larger role across this lifecycle. The opportunity now is to move further towards systems-led engineering and co-creation of intelligent products and platforms.’

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 23882.75, down by 173.05 points or 0.72% after trading in a range of 23786.80 and 23883.60. There were 8 stocks advancing against 42 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Coal India up by 3.85%, Adani Ports &SEZ up by 0.91%, Adani Enterprises up by 0.80%, ONGC up by 0.55% and Axis Bank up by 0.55%. On the flip side, Eicher Motors down by 3.98%, Bajaj Auto down by 2.79%, Interglobe Aviation down by 2.62%, Asian Paints down by 1.99% and Shriram Finance down by 1.97% were the top losers.

All Asian markets were trading lower; Nikkei 225 slipped 1951.34 points or 2.95% to 64,264.00, Taiwan Weighted lost 642.23 points or 1.37% to 46,306.49, Jakarta Composite plunged 18.73 points or 0.28% to 6,581.21, Shanghai Composite weakened 37.29 points or 0.94% to 3,942.60, KOSPI dropped 268.01 points or 3.92% to 6,567.79, Hang Seng declined 271.73 points or 1.07% to 25,058.00 and Straits Times fell 1.42 points or 0.02% to 5,708.95.