Mumbai’s stock market took another beating on April 25, 2025, with the Sensex and Nifty clocking losses for the second day running, dragged down by heavy selling in auto and pharma stocks. The broader market wasn’t spared either—small and midcap indices got clobbered, shedding 2% as investors turned skittish.
The BSE Sensex, India’s bellwether index, closed at 79,110.22, down 589.45 points or 0.74%. It wasn’t a straight plunge; the index had clawed its way up early in the session, touching an intraday high of 80,297.67 before sellers swarmed. The NSE Nifty 50, meanwhile, ended at 24,048.90, off 155.40 points or 0.64%, after briefly flirting with 24,400. By day’s end, both indices looked bruised, reflecting a market grappling with profit-taking and sector-specific woes.
Auto stocks were a wreck. Big names like Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors bled heavily, with losses between 3% and 5%, as supply chain snags and rising input costs spooked investors. Pharma, usually a safe bet, didn’t fare much better—Sun Pharma and Cipla slid over 2% each, hit by regulatory jitters and weaker-than-expected earnings outlooks. The Nifty Auto Index fell 1.8%, while the Nifty Pharma Index dropped 1.4%, making them the day’s worst performers.
Smaller stocks, often the market’s riskier bets, got hammered even harder. The BSE Smallcap Index cratered 2.1%, and the BSE Midcap Index wasn’t far behind, down 1.9%. Stocks like Shriram Finance and Adani Enterprises, darlings of the midcap space, tanked 4% to 8%, leading the blue-chip losers. The selling frenzy in these segments pointed to investors cashing out after a sharp rally earlier in April, when the Sensex had surged 8,000 points from its lows.
Market breadth told a grim story: on the BSE, 2,800 stocks declined against just 1,200 advances. The volatility index, India VIX, spiked 5%, signaling traders were bracing for more choppiness. Sectorally, it wasn’t all doom—Nifty IT eked out a 0.3% gain, propped up by bargain-hunting in tech giants like TCS and Infosys. But that was a rare bright spot in an otherwise dour session.
Foreign institutional investors pulled back, offloading Rs 1,200 crore worth of equities, while domestic funds tried to cushion the fall, mopping up Rs 800 crore in shares. The rupee held steady at 83.45 against the dollar, offering little cheer to a market licking its wounds.
Trading volumes stayed robust at Rs 1.2 lakh crore, but the mood was cautious. With corporate earnings season in full swing and global cues mixed—Wall Street had ended flat overnight—investors seemed content to lock in gains rather than chase new highs. The Sensex and Nifty, still up 10% year-to-date, faced their toughest week since March, with analysts eyeing support levels at 78,500 and 23,800, respectively.
By the closing bell, Mumbai’s trading floors buzzed with the usual mix of gritted teeth and gallows humor. The numbers didn’t lie: 32 of the Sensex’s 30 stocks ended lower, with only HCL Tech and Nestle India in the green. The Nifty’s top losers mirrored the carnage—Adani Ports, Hero MotoCorp, and Bajaj Auto all down over 3%.