Share Market Updates: After opening in the green on Thursday, the stock market's performance deteriorated and it recorded a sharp decline. The Sensex has fallen by more than 500 points. The Nifty is also down.

The domestic stock market made a strong start on Thursday

Share Market Today: After opening in the green on Thursday, Indian equity benchmarks have turned red. The Sensex has now fallen 554 points to 83180. Similarly, the Nifty has also slipped 160 points to 25658. Most of the Sensex stocks, such as Indigo, Trent, BEL, Mahindra & Mahindra, Power Grid, and Reliance Industries, have fallen up to 1.8%. Only Infosys, TCS, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, and Maruti Suzuki India are trading in the green. In the broader market, the Nifty Midcap 100 fell 0.52%, while the Nifty Smallcap 100 was down 0.11%. 

Sectorally, Nifty IT gained 0.88%, followed by Nifty Pharma, which rose 0.22%. In contrast, Nifty Realty declined 0.56%, while Nifty Private Bank and Nifty FMCG declined 0.2% each.

Asian markets rise

Asian indexes rose on Thursday, following overnight gains on Wall Street. Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.52 percent, while the Topix gained 0.39 percent. South Korea's Kospi index also jumped 2.76 percent to a new record high. The small-cap Kosdaq also advanced 0.59 percent. Markets in Hong Kong and China were closed for the Lunar New Year holiday. 

The state of Wall Street

The US stock market closed higher on Wednesday, with investors focused on the minutes of the Federal Reserve meeting. The S&P 500 index rose 0.56 percent to close at 6881.31, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.78 percent to close at 22753.63. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 129.47 points, or 0.26 percent, to close at 49,662.66.

US Fed Meeting Minutes

The minutes of last month's US Federal Reserve meeting were released three weeks later, on February 18th. This is typically a detailed record of the previous monetary policy meeting. US Federal Reserve officials had already indicated that interest rates would remain unchanged for the foreseeable future. Most of them believed that more attention would be paid to the trend of inflation before cutting interest rates—a process that could take months.

At the January 27-28 meeting, two officials appeared to oppose the decision to keep interest rates steady. The minutes of the meeting showed that others remained neutral, saying the chances of a rate cut or a rate hike were equal.