Sensex, Nifty Suffer Biggest Single-Day Selloff Ever: 10 Things To Know

Sensex and Nifty crashed on Thursday mirroring losses in global markets after the WHO declared the deadly Coronavirus as pandemic.

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indices crashed on Thursday mirroring losses in global markets after the World Health Organisation declared the deadly coronavirus a pandemic. The Sensex plummeted as much as 3,204.3 points to 32,493.10 and the Nifty 50 index plunged as much as 950.4 points to hit 9,508.00. A sharp fall in international oil prices also spooked investors across the globe. More than 1,00,000 people have been infected by the deadly coronavirus around the globe and 73 in India. In Asia, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 3.2 per cent and touched its lowest level since early 2019, while Japan’s Nikkei crumbled 5.3 per cent. Domestic benchmarks fell the most on record in terms of biggest single-day fall in absolute terms to hit over two year lows.

Here are 10 things to know about bloodbath on Dalal Street:

1. At 2:11 pm, the Sensex was down 2,423 points or 6.8 per cent lower at 33,274 and Nifty was at 9,730, down 9,731 per cent or 728 points. All the Nifty 50 shares traded lower at the time.
2. Yes Bank was top loser in the Nifty 50 basket of shares; the stock plunged 16 per cent. Bharat Petroleum, Tata Motors, Vedanta, Axis Bank, Adani Ports, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp, ONGC, GAIL India, Hindalco and State Bank of India also fell between 10 per cent and 15 per cent.
3. HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Axis Bank, TCS and Kotak Mahindra Bank were biggest drags on the Sensex. They collectively wiped out more than 1,000 points from the Sensex.
4. “The markets are already in a bear phase (20 per cent off peak). The Nifty is far away from the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) of 10,300 and will likely close below that level today,” AK Prabhakar, head of research at IDBI Capital, told NDTV. “The lockouts around the world are spooking the markets.”
5. The selloff was visible across sectors as all of the 19 gauges compiled by the BSE traded lower. The S&P BSE Metal, Oil & Gas, Realty, Bankex, Auto, Industrials, Healthcare and Energy sector indices traded down 8-10 per cent at the time.
6. Mid- and small-cap shares underperformed their larger peers; the S&P BSE MidCap and the SmallCap indices traded 8.2 per cent and 9 per cent lower respectively.
7. Market breadth was extremely bearish, with 2,061 shares trading lower against only 145 moving higher on the BSE.
8. European markets opened sharply lower with England’s FTSE plunging 6.3 per cent, French CAC40 index slumping 6.5 per cent and Germany’s DAX was down 7 per cent.
9. Overnight, Wall Street stocks plunged on Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average confirming a bear market for the first time since the 2008 global financial crisis, after the US President Donald Trump announced a ban on all travel from Europe except the UK for 30 days starting Friday, stunning investors, who anticipated more disruptions to businesses and the world economy going forward.
10. The United States’ travel ban from Europe refuelled concerns about the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on world business. Analysts had already been gauging the chances of major economies entering recession in the past few weeks due to the fast-spreading outbreak.