Infosys, other IT stocks bleed for 5th straight session over US discretionary spending worries

Nifty IT in bear territory

The shares of information technology companies continued to trade with losses, pushing the Nifty IT index down in the red for the fifth consecutive session. Bucking the trend in the overall market which stood in the green, Nifty IT hovered around 36,176.10. Notably, the index has slipped into the bear market territory after the sharp fall in the previous session.

The shares of L&T Tech Services were the top losers on the index, falling nearly 1.3 percent to trade at TRs 4,334 per share. They were followed by Coforge and Wipro shares, which were down over 1 percent each. Coforge shares were trading at Rs 7,318 apiece, while those of Wipro were trading at Rs 266 apiece.

Heavyweight Infosys shares dropped nearly 1 percent to trade at Rs 1,577 apiece. This comes after the shares of the IT major crashed nearly 5 percent on March 12 to levels last seen in July 2024, eight months ago, following downgrades by key brokerages owing to uncertainty regarding discretionary spending by US clients. Motilal Oswal Financial Services downgraded the stock to 'Neutral'. Morgan Stanley downgraded Infosys to equal weight and cut target price to Rs 1,740 per share from the earlier Rs 2,150 per share.

The fall in the share price of Infosys was the top contributor to the downturn in Nifty IT index.

The shares of Persistent, TCS, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra and LTI Mindtree were also trading in the red with marginal losses.

Notably, revival of discretionary spending by clients of Indian information technology (IT) firms is expected to be further delayed as fears of US recession triggered by Trump’s potential tariff increase.

Investor concerns have grown over a potential economic slowdown after US President Donald Trump refrained from ruling out a recession amid the implementation of trade tariffs.