₹14 lakh crore wiped off from Indian stock market as Trump tariffs unleash ‘economic nuclear war’

Stock market crash today: It turned out to be a ‘Black Monday’ for Indian stock market investors, as tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on over 180 countries across the globe unleashed an ‘economic nuclear war’, sending Dalal Street into a tailspin.

Tracking a plunge in Asian peers and Wall Street, the stock market indices back home - BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty - also tumbled 3% each in trade on Monday, April 7. The Sensex lost 2226.79 points or 2.95% to settle at 73,137.90, while the Nifty 50 closed the session at 22,161.60, down 742.85 points or 3.24%.

This bloodbath left investors poorer by ₹14 lakh crore as the market capitalization of all companies listed on the BSE dropped to ₹389.25 lakh crore from ₹403.34 lakh crore in the previous trading session on Friday.

Mid & small-cap indices face deeper falls

The broader markets saw even sharper cuts, as the BSE Midcap index tanked 3.46% to 39,107.96 while the BSE Smallcap index lost 4.13% to 43,974.36. In morning deals, the mid-cap index had lost 8% and the small-cap index a whopping 10%.

The advance-decline ratio was at 1:6, signaling that for every one stock that traded in the green, at least six were in the red, highlighting the extent of the weakness in the Indian stock market. The fear gauge India VIX also spiked, surging 65.7% to 22.79.

Sectorally, too, none of the indices were spared. All 13 major sectors on the NSE traded with losses, with Nifty Metal leading the losers pack amid fears that a US recession will slow down industrial demand. Additionally, the IT pack also suffered significant losses given the US-facing nature of the companies that are part of the Nifty IT pack. Defensives like FMCG and pharma also tanked, but the quantum of loss was slightly lower.

Global markets are not spared

The ripples of Trump's trade policies were felt across the globe, as Asian markets witnessed their worst single-day fall in 16 years.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell as much as 7.9%, the most since October 2008, with TSMC, Tencent and Sony among the biggest drags, Bloomberg reported. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index plunged as much as 10.7%, the worst since the global financial crisis. Every market was solidly in the red.

The tariff impact has not spared the US stock markets either. Rather, they have emerged as one of the biggest casualties of Trump's trade policies.

According to billionaire investor Bill Ackman, as Trump embarks on an “economic nuclear war”, he risks destroying confidence in the U.S. economy and alienating investors in the country.

“By placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital,” Ackman wrote in a social media post.

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