Sensex tumbles 800 points from day's high; key trigger behind the sell-off in IT stocks

Sensex and Nifty gave up their intra day highs to trade sharply lower as Asian peers tanked to multi-month lows amid a fall in technology stocks. The crash in tech stocks came amid early signs of a Democratic win in the US midterm elections, which is expected to slow down artificial intelligence spending in Asia's tech-heavy markets.

Japan's Nikkei 225 slipped 4.8% the most. Taiwan Weighted index fell 3.28% and the broader Topix First Section fell nearly 2%.

On Nikkei, market heavyweights such as SoftBank Group plummeted nearly 6%, while semiconductor and hardware firms like Tokyo Electron, Advantest, and Screen Holdings all dropped roughly 4% each.

In India, Sensex fell 796 points from its day's high of 77,396 to a low of 76,604. Nifty too tanked 250 points from its day's high of 23,946 to a low of 23,696.

IT sector stocks were the top losers in line with their Asian peers.

TCS, HCL Technologies, Infosys and Tech Mahindra were among the top Sensex losers, falling up to 2.75%.

BSE IT index too crashed 685 points to 30,057 from the day's high of 30,742. It was trading 466 pts lower at 30,215 in the afternoon session.

The Nifty IT index too crashed 633 points to 31,917.

IT shares were the only sectoral losers in the Indian market.

On the other hand, top sectoral gainer was the BSE capital goods index rising 1856 points to 72,251.

Other gainers were BSE consumer durables index rising 745 pts, BSE metal index gaining 442 pts and BSE oil and gas index climbing 295 pts in the afternoon session.

At 1:07 pm, Sensex rose 96 pts to 77,013 and Nifty gained 37 pts to 23,847.