The markets opened on a sluggish note on Thursday and then went down further after the United States Federal Reserve indicated that interest rates may go up later in the year. The Sensex crashed 439.23 points to end at 27,643.11 while Nifty came down 135.45 points to 8,573.35. The rupee plummeted 0.4% to 66.76, the lowest since September 29.

Minutes from the meeting of the United States policy review also suggested there could be a rate hike next month before the presidential election on November 8. Those who suffered the worst hit in Thursday's morning trade were HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, RIL and Tata Consultancy Services, while stocks of banks, autos, oil and gas and metal dragged Nifty50 down, reported The Economic Times. Among the Sensex gainers were Asian Paints, Cipla, Infosys and ONGC.

Other factors that influenced slow trading included murmurs that TCS would report a 0.2% quarter-on-quarter drop in its second quarter earnings on Thursday.