FX.co ★ Sensex Extends Losses to Fourth Session

India’s BSE Sensex slipped about 0.1% to 72,434 on Thursday, extending its losing streak to a fourth consecutive session. Persistent foreign investor selling continued to pressure the market, though a pullback in oil prices provided some support. Brent crude retreated to around $98 per barrel amid developments related to US-Iran ceasefire talks.

Foreign investors offloaded $1.06 billion worth of Indian equities on Wednesday, taking cumulative outflows over the last five sessions to roughly $3.6 billion. At the same time, US inflation data came in softer than expected for August: the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge, the PCE price index, rose 3.4% year-on-year, below the 3.7% consensus forecast. The weaker reading reduced expectations of a Fed rate hike in October, easing some of the pressure on emerging-market assets.

On the stock front, Mahindra & Mahindra (-2.3%), MTAR (-1.9%), and Cupid (-0.7%) all declined. In contrast, Kotak Mahindra Bank advanced about 2.4% after naming Anup Kumar Saha as chief executive officer for a three-year term, to succeed Ashok Vaswani when his tenure concludes next year.