India's stock markets closed lower on Friday as NSE Nifty fell 336.10 points to 25,471.10 and BSE Sensex dropped 1,048.16 points to 82,626.76. The week ended with both indices losing up to 1.1%. The Nifty IT index led the decline, down 1.4% on Friday and over 8% for the week — its biggest weekly fall in 10 months. IT stocks saw a value drop of ₹4.69 lakh crore in the week. Ajit Mishra, SVP Research at Religare Broking, said, "The weakness in the US markets due to the sharp declines in IT stocks cascaded to other sectors such as metals, as investors rushed to book profits from overheated stocks." Nifty Metal index fell 3.3%, Realty dropped 2.2%. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) were net sellers at Rs 7,395 crore on Friday, while domestic institutions bought Rs 5,554 crore. FPIs have bought Rs 10,734 crore in February so far, after net selling over Rs 34,000 crore in January. Global markets were also weak; Nasdaq Composite fell 2% on Thursday due to AI disruption fears. Asian markets dropped: Hong Kong -1.7%, China -1.3%, Japan -1.2%, South Korea -0.3%, with Taiwan rising 1.6%. At home, mid-cap and small-cap indices slipped around 1.6%. Of 4,364 BSE stocks traded, 1,253 gained and 2,960 declined. Key IT stocks like Coforge dropped 4.4%; Wipro, TCS, and Oracle Financial Services declined nearly 2% each. LTI Mindtree and HCL Technologies fell 1.7% and 1.2%. Sonam Srivastava, CEO of Wright Research, said, "The deep cuts in IT stocks were largely sentiment-driven since the valuations are attractive." She called it "a buying opportunity but not so much in the large cap space as the growth outlook is not very strong in those names." Religare's Mishra noted, "If the US IT stocks witness a further fall, then it could rub off on Indian IT companies as well." Fund managers pointed to worries about shortened project timelines and huge productivity gains from AI affecting IT revenues. Christy Mathai from Quantum Mutual Fund said AI adoption is still early but valuations "are below long-term averages and currently bakes in subdued growth." Despite valuation comfort in some IT stocks, investor mood remains weak.