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Indian markets continued to slide for the fourth straight session to fall 2 percent each on November 22, as selling across sectors, weak global cues, and repeal of farm laws weighed on sentiment. Today, the markets are likely to continue their losing trend with gap-down opening tracking weakness in global markets. There will be some cautiousness with Crisil Ratings report that the demand growth for petrol and diesel is going to be severely impacted due to the push towards Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), ethanol blending, and electric vehicles. Traders will be concerned as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) net sold shares worth Rs 3,438.76 crore in the Indian equity market on November 22, as per provisional data available on the NSE. Traders may take note of Fitch Ratings’ statement that the Centre could better its fiscal deficit at 6.6 per cent of GDP in this financial year on stronger-than-expected revenue buoyancy, even if the budgeted disinvestment target is not met. However, some respite may come later in the day as an SBI research report stated that the country's GDP growth is likely to be around 8.1 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year and in the range of 9.3-9.6 per cent during fiscal 2022. It added that in the first quarter of FY 22, the economy grew 20.1 per cent. Some support may come as the preliminary data of the commerce ministry showed that the country's exports rose 18.8 per cent to $20.01 billion during the three week period of this month (November 1-21), due to healthy growth in sectors such as petroleum products, engineering goods, chemicals and gems and jewellery. Meanwhile, the finance ministry has notified uniform 12 per cent GST rate on manmade fibre (MMF), yarn, fabrics and apparel, thereby addressing the inverted tax structure in the MMF textile value chain. Telecom industry stocks will be in focus as data released by telecom regulator TRAI showed that Bharti Airtel added 2.74 lakh mobile subscribers in September even as larger rival Reliance Jio lost 1.9 crore users and Vodafone Idea lost 10.77 lakh subscribers during the month. Shares of Latent View Analytics will begin trading on the stock exchanges today. The Rs 600 crore IPO was subscribed to a whopping 326.49 times with all category of investors oversubscribing their portion of the issue. Besides, two stocks - Escorts and Vodafone Idea - are under the F&O ban for November 23.

The US markets ended mostly lower on Monday following the announcement of a second term for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Asian markets are trading mostly in red on Tuesday tracking an overnight fall in US stocks. Financial markets in Japan were closed on Tuesday for a holiday.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks suffered sharp losses on Monday, extending losses to the fourth trading session in a row. A sell-off across sectors, led by realty, energy and consumer durables shares, pulled the headline indices lower. Broader markets also tumbled, with both the midcap and smallcap indices falling by around three percent. Equity markets started the week on a negative note and extended their decline further, as RBI data showed the country’s foreign exchange reserves declined by $763 million to $640.112 billion in the week ended November 12, 2021. In the previous week ended November 5, the reserves had decreased by $1.145 billion to $ 640.874 billion. It touched a lifetime high of $642.453 billion in the week ended September 3, 2021. Adding to the pessimism, the government increased goods and services tax (GST) applicable on finished products such as apparel, textiles and footwear from 5 percent to 12 percent, effective January 2022. The benchmark indices continued to languish at lower levels in late afternoon session, as exchange data showed that the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers of stocks worth Rs 3,930.62 on Thursday, thus taking the total net selling to nearly Rs 10,000 crore so far this month in the cash segment. This is following Rs 25,572 crore worth selling in October. Since the start of this fiscal year, FIIs have net sold shares to the tune of Rs 75,500 crore. Markets participants overlooked the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) stating that the Indian economy is likely to grow by 7-7.5 per cent in the next fiscal year, while observing that contact intensive sectors and construction should recover in 2022-23. Traders paid no heed towards Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subramanian’s statement that the recent reforms initiated by the government will lay the foundation of higher growth. He said the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme being implemented by the government is directed towards growth. Finally, the BSE Sensex fell 1170.12 points or 1.96% to 58,465.89 and the CNX Nifty was down by 348.25 points or 1.96% to 17,416.55

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