Sensex falls 285 points on global economy worries

Indian benchmark indices on Today plunged in opening trade, taking cue from weakness in Asian and the US markets. While 30-share  Sensex was down 285  points,  Nifty was trading 88  points lower by at 9: 36 am.

Stocks worldwide fell after the US Federal Reserve announced that it will shuffle $400 billion of its portfolio to try to drive down long-term interest rates and get the economy going.

 Reacting to the bearish forecast of the US central bank, Dow Jones industrial average lost 283.82 points, or 2.5 per cent, and closed at 11,124.84. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 35.33, or 2.9 per cent, to 1,166.76 The Nasdaq composite fell 52.05, or 2 per cent, to 2,538.19.

In opening trade, Japan's Nikkei 225 slumped 1.6 per cent to 8,598.32 while South Korea's Kospi index slid 2.6 per cent to 1,806.62. Australia's S&P ASX 200 was 2.2 per cent down at 3,984.40.

Back home, country's largest private company RIL was trading down 1.68 per cent.

Vetri Subramaniam, CIO at  Religare Mutual Fund said that valuations were now cheaper than average. There are lot of opportunities for stock picking in this environment . Headwinds both globally and locally will keep stocks capped in the near term.

BSE Metal Index lost 300 points followed by BSE Bankex losing 232 points. BSE IT iNdex was trading in red down by 78 points after US markets' negative reaction to the Fed announcement yesterday. Infosys was the top loser in BSE IT index, down 1.37 per cent.

BSE Oil and gas index was trading down by around 92 points. BSE 500 index depicted weakness on a broader term with  57 advances against  426 declines.

Adani Enterprises was the top loser falling 4. 21 percent followed by Mundra Port, which was down by 3.92 per cent.  Videocon Industries and Jet Airways were the top gainers rising 2.29 per cent and 1.78 per cent, respectively.