New Delhi, Mar 15 (IANS): India's key equity indices -- Sensex and Nifty -- closed the session deeply in the red as investors' focus shifted to the US Fed's FOMC meeting to be concluded on Wednesday.
With Tuesday's losses, the benchmark indices snapped their five-day bull run.
"(Besides domestic indices) World markets are also lower ahead of the US Fed meeting in which the market widely expects the FOMC to initiate a rate hike," said Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services.
After reducing policy rates in wake of Covid, market participants widely expect the US Fed to tighten monetary policy rates.
Also, rising retail inflation in India also weighed on the domestic indices.
As per the data furnished by the National Statistical Office on Monday, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose to 6.07 per cent last month from 6.01 per cent in January 2022, which again was above the RBI's tolerance band of 2-6 per cent.
Sensex settled 1.3 per cent or 709 points down at 55,777 points, whereas Nifty 1.2 per cent or 208 points down at 16,663 points.