Sensex, Nifty decline in early trade as power, metal stocks drag markets lower

Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty declined in early trade on Thursday (October 22, 2026), dragged down by selling in power and metal stocks amid a broad sell-off across Asian markets.

Besides, elevated crude oil prices and firm U.S. bond yields weighed on investors' sentiment.

The 30-share BSE Sensex plunged 678.90 points, or 0.92%, to 73,030.79 in the morning trade. The 50-share NSE Nifty declined 250.90 points, or 1.10%, to 22,568.10.

Among the Sensex constituents, PowerGrid, Bharat Electronics Ltd, Maruti Suzuki India, Tata Steel, Mahindra & Mahindra, HDFC Bank, Asian Paints, Adani Ports, NTPC, Trent, Bajaj Finserv, IndiGo and Hindustan Unilever were the major laggards.

Eternal, however, rose over 2% after the parent entity of Zomato and Blinkit, on Wednesday (October 21, 2026) reported a consolidated net profit of ₹125 crore for the September quarter, nearly doubling from ₹65 crore a year ago, on robust revenue growth.

Bharti Airtel, Infosys and HCL Technologies also traded higher.

"The recent market trend has been the outperformance of large-caps relative to mid-and small-caps. The broader market resilience in recent months has been more a function of liquidity than earnings," said V.K. Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Investments Ltd.

He added that the latest September AMFI data also reveals this trend of increasing preference for mid-and small-caps over large-caps. This has created a paradox of overvalued mid and small caps, particularly the latter, coexisting with attractively valued large-caps.

"This paradox cannot continue for long and will get corrected. It appears that this is happening now. This trend is likely to sustain," Vijayakumar added.

Asian markets were sharply lower, with South Korea's Kospi declining 3.12 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng benchmark falling 3%, Japan's Nikkei 225 index losing 1.94% and Shanghai's SSE Composite Index slipping nearly 1%.

US markets ended higher in overnight deals on Wednesday (October 21, 2026).

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, rose nearly 2% to $110.68 per barrel.

"Strong external headwinds in the form of elevated crude prices and high U.S. bond yields are emboldening bears to build short positions in the market. This is the reason why the market is declining even on days of positive institutional- FII and DII- buying, like Wednesday," Vijayakumar said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) bought equities worth ₹1,022.32 crore on Wednesday (October 21, 2026), while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) also purchased shares worth ₹1,614.32 crore, according to exchange data.