Mumbai: The Indian stock market started the financial year 2020-21 on a sluggish note amid the coronavirus crisis as the BSE Sensex plummeted 1,200 points on Wednesday.
The Sensex settled well below the psychological level of 29,000 and the Nifty50 fell below the 8,300 mark.
The decline was in line with the Asian stock markets, which fell due to the growing number of novel coronavirus cases worldwide.
“The first day of the financial year started off on a negative note, impacted by the negative global markets and also domestic uncertainties with regards to bank’s stressed assets and auto numbers. FIIs have net sold around Rs 62,000 crore in equity in March and with virus infections increasing, markets are anticipating a worsening of the situation,” said Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services.
Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities said that broad market indices like the BSE Midcap and Small Cap indices lost less, thereby outperforming the Sensex and Nifty.
Market breadth was positive on the BSE and NSE, he said.
Sell-off was witnessed across all sectoral indices. The top losers were the BSE IT, Banking, Telecom and FMCG indices.
“Major Asian markets have closed on a negative note. European indices like FTSE, CAC and DAX are trading in the red. Technically, while the Nifty has corrected today, it broadly remains stuck in a trading range between the 8,200-8,680 levels for the last few sessions. Further directional cues are likely to emerge on a move beyond this range,” Jasani said.
The Sensex closed at 28,265.31, lower by 1,203.18 points or 4.08 per cent from the previous close of 29,468.49.
It had opened at 29,505.33 and touched an intra-day high of 29,505.98 and a low of 28,073.43.
The Nifty50 settled at 8,253.80, lower by 343.95 points or 4 per cent from its previous close.
Among the Sensex stocks, Tech Mahindra declined the most, by 9.51 per cent, followed by Kotak Mahindra Bank (down 8.81 per cent), TCS (6.23 per cent), Infosys (5.65 per cent) and Axis Bank (5.50 per cent).
On the other hand, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto, Titan Company and Bajaj Finance were the only gainers, as they rose 2.82 per cent, 1.33 per cent, 0.35 per cent and 0.18 per cent, respectively.
Trading on the exchanges will be closed on Thursday on account of ‘Ram Navami’.
