Equity benchmarks began the day on a sour note, with the Sensex down 425 points in opening trade, reflecting sluggish global markets and fears over continuing foreign capital outflows.

Sensex was 425.11 points lower at 51,070.68. The Nifty fell 125.7 points to 15,234.90.

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Asian Paints, Wipro, Dr Reddy’s, Titan, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Sun Pharma, and Maruti were the Sensex pack’s top laggards. Reliance Industries and NTPC, on the other hand, benefited.

In Asia, Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai were trading down, while Hong Kong was trading higher.

On Thursday, stock markets in the United States finished substantially down.

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On Thursday, the BSE benchmark fell 1,045.60 points, or 1.99%, to 51,495.79. Similarly, the NSE Nifty fell 331.55 points, or 2.11%, to 15,360.60.

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“The dominant theme impacting equity markets globally is the synchronised global monetary tightening and the consequent fears of economic slowdown,” said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

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According to exchange statistics, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continued to be net sellers in the capital market on Thursday, selling shares worth Rs 3,257.65 crore.

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Separately, the international oil benchmark Brent crude fell 0.68% to USD 118.98 per barrel. The rupee rose 6 paise to 78.04 against the US dollar in early trade on Friday, helped by falling crude oil prices.