Sensex loses 806 points; investors poorer by Rs 5L cr in 2 days of mayhem
A bloodbath on Dalal Street saw sensex crash by more than 800 points on Thursday amid all-round selling spurred by a falling rupee and rising crude oil prices. Similarly, the NSE Nifty cracked the 10,600-level by falling 259 points. Investors lost around Rs 5 lakh crore in just two days of stock market crash where the BSE benchmark index plummeted by 1,357 points.
Led by the sharp sell-off in equities, the market capitalisation of BSE-listed companies tumbled Rs 5,02,895.97 crore to Rs 1,40,39,742.92 crore ($1.90 trillion). According to news agency PTI, the dollar figure has been arrived at by calculating the m-cap from rupee’s intra-day low of 73.81 Thursday. With this, market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms slipped below the $2 trillion.
Spooked by overnight sharp rally in Brent crude price which touched fresh four-year high of Rs 86.68 before showing mild correction, markets witnessed severe selling on Thursday with the benchmark Sensex crashing over 806 points to end at 35,169.16 after the rupee hit a new intra-day low of 73.81 against the dollar. This is the lowest closing since July 2 when the index had settled at 35,264.41. The sensex had lost 550.51 points on Wednesday.
The bear grip is so fierce on the market that no sector has survived the pain. For the last several weeks investors had used pharma and IT sector to “hide” from market fall since they were supposed to benefit from falling rupee. But during the last two days, the IT sector has also cracked with TCS leading the fall, losing as much as 10 per cent in two sessions.
With blue chips companies like Maruti Suzuki and Nestle Eicher Motor shedding almost 28 per cent in two months, the large caps universe has also not remained immune to the sell-off. On Thursday, among the large-caps, RIL was the worst hit plunging 7.03 per cent followed by Hero MotoCorp 5.45 per cent and TCS 4.54 per cent. In the broader market, the S&P BSE midcap index fell by 1.93 per cent and small cap index 2.07 per cent.
The situation is grim that nearly 400 stocks hit their 52-week low on BSE on Thursday. At the BSE, 1,889 stocks declined, while 775 advanced and 138 remained unchanged.
Not only traders but long-term investors, including those holding mutual fold portfolios, have suffered heavy losses. Several mid-cap and small-cap MFs have lost as much as 30 per cent during the mayhem that started three weeks ago.
With fix deposit interest rate falling, the investors had parked their money in a big way in the MFS, and now that the market has crashed, they are fleeing by cutting their losses.
As per various estimates and once specific by CAMS, a mutual fund registrar which covers 85 per cent of the industry flows, cash plans or liquid funds saw outflows of around Rs 69,694 crore last month alone.
As market plunged on Thursday, stocks of tyres, paint and chemical companies turned distinctly weak as crude is main raw material used by these industries. Selling pressure was broad-based, while IT, teck, realty and oil & gas and auto stocks were the worst hit.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth a net of Rs 1,550 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) made purchases to the tune of Rs 1,402 crore on Wednesday.
While Reliance Industries and TCS, which fell by 7 and 4 per cent respectively, other laggards were TCS 4.54 per cent, Adani Ports 4.17 per cent, ONGC 3.74 per cent, Sun Pharma 3.70 per cent, HDFC Bank 3.46 per cent, Bajaj Auto 3.04 per cent, IndusInd Bank 3.03 per cent, HUL 2.97 per cent, Bharti Airtel 2.95 per cent, ITC Ltd 2.49 per cent, Kotak Bank 1.93 per cent, Asian Paint 1.90 per cent, Tata Motors 1.89 per cent, Coal India 1.61 per cent, HDFC Ltd 1.33 per cent.
However, ICICI bank bucked the trend flaring by over 4 per cent on news that Chanda Kochhar has finally decided to quit the bank.
Among other winners was Axis Bank at 2.70 per cent. L&T rose 1.18 per cent, Yes Bank gained 1.08 per cent, M&M was up 0.52 and Tata Steel added 0.38 per cent.
Sector wise, the BSE oil & gas index suffered the most by crashing 6.58 per cent, followed by IT 3.28 per cent, healthcare 3.02 per cent, teck 2.97 per cent, FMCG 2.56 per cent, PSU 2.54 per cent and auto 1.84 per cent. Infrastructure, consumer durables, realty, power, metal, bankex and capital goods indices too ended lower by up to 1.74 per cent.
The broader markets too continued to face heat with the midcap and small-cap indices ending notably lower as investors indulged in trimming their portfolios in line with overall trends. Elsewhere in Asia, Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.73 per cent, Japan’s Nikkei shed 0.56 per cent, while Taiwan plunged 1.33 per cent.