India’s stock benchmarks erased intraday losses to settle flat on Thursday, as news of a U.S.-Russia presidential meeting helped markets rebound from a slide sparked by the U.S. doubling tariffs on Indian goods.
The Nifty 50 
NIFTY and Sensex 
SENSEX dropped nearly 1% intraday, hitting their lowest since May.
The Nifty, however, closed 0.09% higher at 24,596.15 points and the Sensex gained 0.1% to 80,623.26.
Thomson ReutersIndia’s Nifty 50 erases day’s losses as hopes of US-Russia talks arrest tariff-led slide
The benchmarks recovered after the announcement of a meeting between Russian President Putin and U.S. President Trump in the coming days, which analysts say will soften Washington’s stance on India’s imports of Russian oil.
The broader small- 
CNXSMALLCAP and mid-caps CNXMIDCAP rose 0.2% and 0.3% respectively.
On Wednesday, Trump imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods over the 25% duty announced earlier, citing New Delhi’s continued buying of Russian oil.
“The prima facie imposition of a combined 50% tariff on Indian exports is negative for markets and for investor sentiment, including foreign institutional investors,” said Peeyush Mittal, portfolio manager at Matthews Asia.
Foreign portfolio investors have sold Indian shares worth $900 million so far in August, following $2 billion in outflows in July amid trade uncertainty and weak corporate earnings.
Still, expectations of a resolution before the new tariffs take effect on August 27 and the news of U.S.-Russia presidential talks helped markets recover from the day’s losses, three analysts said.
Energy 
CNXENERGY and oil & gas (.NIFOILGAS) indexes, which lost about 1% each during the session, dragged by Reliance 
RELIANCE1! and oil-marketing companies on fears of rising costs if Russian oil supplies are disrupted, pared most of their losses to close about 0.2% lower.
IT 
CNXIT and pharma 
CNXPHARMA stocks, which have high exposure to the U.S. economy, also rebounded from intraday declines and rose 0.9% and 0.8%, respectively.
Among individual stocks, Hero MotoCorp 
HEROMOTOCO jumped 4.2% after reporting a quarterly profit beat.