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Markets trade under heavy pressure amid AI-led disruption concerns
Feb-13-2026

Indian equity benchmarks made gap-down opening on Friday, tracking weakness in Asian counterparts as well as broadly negative cues from Wall Street overnight, due to sell-off in IT and Teck stocks following pressure in global tech stocks amid fresh concerns about artificial intelligence disruptions to traditional business models weighing on several sectors, such as financial, transportation and logistics as well as commercial real estate companies. Sensex and Nifty were trading lower with cut of around a percent each in early deals with board-based selling in all the sector indices. Infosys was leading the losers with cut of over 5.50% in early trade. Traders took note of the government data which showed that India’s retail inflation stood at 2.75 per cent in January under the new series of All India Consumer Price Index (CPI), with 2024 as the base year.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 82897.66, down by 777.26 points or 0.93% after trading in a range of 82791.52 and 83079.70. There were 4 stocks advancing against 26 stocks declining on the index.

The top losing sectoral indices on the BSE were IT down by 4.58%, TECK down by 3.14%, Metal down by 2.95%, Realty down by 2.68% and Basic Materials down by 2.08%, while the was no gainer on the BSE sectoral front.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bajaj Finance up by 0.43%, Bharti Airtel up by 0.11%, HDFC Bank up by 0.05% and SBI up by 0.03%. On the flip side, Infosys down by 5.68%, TCS down by 4.56%, HCL Technologies down by 3.95%, Eternal down by 2.48% and Hindustan Unilever down by 2.39% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, after the government released the new Consumer Price Index (CPI) series with base 2024=100 instead of 2012=100, Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) V Anantha Nageswaran has said the new series will improve the quality of data used in formulating monetary and fiscal policies. The new series has captured more goods and services items, and excluded those which are not consumed presently. He said ‘Since the CPI basket is now aligned with recent expenditure data, the inflation signals derived from this will be more closely matched with the economic conditions. This improves the information basis for calibrating monetary and fiscal policy’. He said that the new series, with wider coverage of services and digital markets, provides policymakers with a more up-to-date basis for assessing real incomes, consumption trends, and purchasing power.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) factors in the retail inflation while arriving at its bi-monthly monetary policy decision. He said if CPI volatility declines, fiscal expenditure, DA fixation, and index bonds, which are linked to CPI, would become more stable, predictable and reliable. He said the proportion of weights assigned to the food basket has come down from 45.86 in CPI 2012 to 36.75 in the new series. It also reflects the reallocation of certain items to other categories, such as restaurants and services.

He said ‘At the macro level, this reflects a progressive diversification of expenditure towards health, education, mobility, and connectivity, which is what you would expect to see from an economy which is seeing rising incomes and rising living standards’. He added that lower weightage for the otherwise volatile group of food and beverages may make the headline inflation also less volatile. He said such rebalancing is typically associated with income growth, productivity gains, and improving living standards. He added the revised basket also highlights the increasing role of services in consumption. He noted that the new series also recognises the growing role of digital channels in price formation and would help in better distinguishing urban and rural dynamics of inflation at the state level, and the subclass as well as item level.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 25560.85, down by 246.35 points or 0.95% after trading in a range of 25525.45 and 25630.35. There were 7 stocks advancing against 43 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were SBI Life Insurance up by 0.83%, Bajaj Finance up by 0.51%, HDFC Life Insurance up by 0.14%, Bharti Airtel up by 0.12% and Eicher Motors up by 0.04%. On the flip side, Infosys down by 5.63%, Hindalco down by 5.54%, TCS down by 4.51%, HCL Technologies down by 4.00% and Wipro down by 3.09% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Hang Seng declined 496.54 points or 1.87% to 26,536.00, Nikkei 225 slipped 432.84 points or 0.75% to 57,207.00, Straits Times fell 66.23 points or 1.32% to 4,950.53, Jakarta Composite weakened 44.79 points or 0.54% to 8,220.56 and Shanghai Composite was down by 28.98 points or 0.7% to 4,105.04, while KOSPI increased 33.07 points or 0.6% to 5,555.34.
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