Indian shares eye tentative bounce after sharp slide to 3-month lows

India’s benchmark shares are poised to open higher on Wednesday, after last session’s bruising selloff pushed them to more than three-month lows, while global trade and geopolitical concerns, uneven earnings and sustained foreign outflows weighed.

Gift Nifty futures were trading at 25,265.5 points as of 8:01 a.m. IST, indicating that the Nifty 50 could start the session marginally above Tuesday’s close of 25,232.50.

The Nifty and Sensex lost about 1.4% and 1.3% on Tuesday - their steepest single-day percentage drop in more than eight months, and logged their lowest closing levels in more than three months.

They are down 4.3% and 4.6% from record highs.

Equities have come under added pressure from elevated global trade and geopolitical uncertainty - sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland and reignite a trade war with the European Union - and a choppy domestic results season marked by earnings misses from heavyweights such as Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank.

The risk-off tone has kept foreign portfolio investors on the sell side. FPIs have offloaded, $3.23 billion of Indian stocks in January so far, contributing to a 3.5% decline in the benchmarks.

Last year, they had sold stocks worth a record $19 billion as Indian shares registered a rare underperformance over Asian and emerging market peers.

Other Asian markets remained under pressure, dropping 0.2%, while Wall Street and European equities witnessed a broad-based selloff overnight.

The Nifty has slipped below the key 20-, 50- and 100-day moving averages and is hovering just above its 200-day move, often a last line of trend support

The market looks oversold, leaving room for a quick relief rally, analysts said, but warned that any rebound may meet stiff resistance and invite “sell-on-rise” positioning until lost averages are convincingly reclaimed.