The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark, Sensex has declined by 209 points and closed at 18,149.87 points. The heavy sell-off by funds has pulled the index down. Moreover, the Reserve Bank of India has raised repo and reverse repo rate today. These key policy rates are now up by 25 basis points. Though, this is basically done to bring inflation down but it has hugely affected the sentiment of the market.

The weak trend in global markets is the other reason of this bearish behavior of the market.

The short-term lending (repo) rate has been hiked to 6.75 per cent and the short-term borrowing (reverse repo) rate has been increased to 5.75 per cent. On today’s trade, the stocks which are linked with interest-rate fluctuations were among the major losers in the market. Banking, realty and auto stocks have declined and drag the index down as well.

As per the data released today, the food inflation of the nation has dipped marginally in the first week of the month of March. It was recorded 9.42 per cent. Despite this marginal decline, the food inflation is still at very high at this point of time.