Indian shares open flat; BSE, brokers fall on tighter capital market lending norms

A man looks at a screen outside the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) building in Mumbai, India, February 2, 2026. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas · Reuters

Reuters

Mon, 16 February 2026 at 1:05 pm GMT+9 1 min read

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Feb 16 (Reuters) - India’s equity benchmarks opened mostly flat on Monday, as sentiment stayed ‌weak after last week’s sell-off in IT ‌stocks, while brokerages and the stock exchange BSE fell after ​the central bank’s move to tighten banks’ capital market exposures.

The Nifty 50 fell 0.11% to 25,441.2, while the BSE Sensex shed 0.12% to 82,536.51, ‌as of 9:17 ⁠a.m. IST.

Ten of the 16 major sectors logged losses at the open. ⁠The broader small-caps and mid-caps fell 0.9% and 0.6%, respectively.

The Nifty and Sensex fell about 1% ​each last ​week, dragged by ​IT stocks on anxiety ‌around AI automation tools and their impact on traditional software businesses.

Among individual stocks, stock exchange operator BSE tumbled 9%, while brokers such as Groww, Motilal Oswal, Angel One lost between 1% ‌and 7%.

The Reserve Bank of ​India’s “new circular tightens banks’ capital ​market exposures, and ​will raise costs for brokers ‌and proprietary desks, curbing leverage ​and liquidity ​in derivatives, where proprietary trading drives 40% of futures and options turnover,” said Devarsh Vakil, ​head of ‌prime research at HDFC Securities.

(Reporting by Vivek ​Kumar M and Bharath Rajeswaran in Bangalore; ​Editing by Janane Venkatraman)

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