Indian stock markets on Thursday plunged amid heavy selling of stocks in metal, banking and tech sectors. The BSE Sensex dived 462.80 points, closing at 37,018.32 while Nifty also took a tumble, going below the 11,000-mark and closing at 10,980.00, down by 138 points.

Bharti Infratel Limited, Wipro Limited, Maruti Suzuki, Power Grid Corporation of India Limited and Eicher Motors were among the top gainers on Nifty while the losses were led by Vedanta Limited, JSW Steel Limited, State Bank of India, Tata Motors and Hindalco Industries Ltd.

Among the top gainers on Sensex were Maruti Suzuki, Power Grid Corporation of India Limited, Reliance Industries Limited, Bajaj Auto and Hero Motocorp while Vedanta, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, Bharti Airtel and Yes Bank contributed the most to the losses on the Sensex.

“For Indian equities, this is on top of the headwinds it has faced recently, like FII [Foreign Institutional Investors] selling on account of tax proposals,” NDTV quoted Vivek Ranjan Misra, head of fundamental research at Karvy Stock Broking as saying. “There are other reasons as well, firstly the weakness in economy has not abated, as evident by the core sector data and auto sales.” It is believed the economy would stabilise in the latter half of the ongoing financial year and that the markets would become better in a couple of quarters, he added.

The markets were under pressure despite United States Federal Reserve Chairperson Jerome Powell reducing interest rates for the first time in years. The primary reason for the disruption of markets, however, was attributed to Powell’s remark on a “mid-cycle adjustment”. Analysts interpreted that the central bank was more inclined to the idea of a “one and done” cut than a cycle of rate reduction, according to Mint.

Misra said international markets had expected “a more dovish Fed” and were not happy with the “mid-cycle adjustment”, which he claimed led to a rise in the dollar. He added that this was not good for emerging market equities such as India.

Meanwhile, the rupee also plunged to 69.10 against the dollar when compared to Wednesday’s low of 68.79.