Mumbai:
Indian shares followed a slide in global peers on Monday as fears intensified over the spread of coronavirus outbreak and oil prices plunged.The Nifty hit its lowest since February 2019 and was on course for its worst day since August 2015.
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The S&P BSE Sensex shed 1,942 points or over per cent to settle at 35,635.
The carnage in the equity market wiped out investor wealth worth Rs 7 lakh crore.Market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms tanked to Rs 137.65 lakh crore intraday on March 9 from Rs 144.31 lakh crore on March 6.
Benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty slid over 6% during the intra-day session before trimming some of their losses later.On the NSE, the Nifty50 index slipped below 10,500-mark to end at 10,451, down 538 points or 5 per cent. The indices witnessed their biggest one-day fall ever in absolute terms. Volatility index, India VIX, surged over 21 per cent to 31.05 levels.
The Sebi's provisional data showed, the domestic institutional investors(DIIs) have bought shares worth of Rs 4,974 crore while the FIIs have sold Rs 6,595 crore worth of shares on Monday.
ONGC (down 16.55 %),Reliance Industries (down 13%), IndusInd Bank (down over 12.32 %), and Tata Steel (down over 8.10 per cent) were the top laggards in the Sensex pack.
ONGC was the top laggard in the Sensex pack. Shares in Yes Bank were up 10% in choppy trade, having fallen 56% on Friday.
A court on Sunday remanded its founder in police custody after he was arrested on money-laundering charges, following a move by the central bank to take control of the lender.
Shares of Reliance Industries took a beating in Monday’s trade as crude oil prices plunged over 25 per cent in the international market following a fallout in Opec talks.
Shares of the company tumbled 13 per cent to Rs 1,105, falling most since October 2008.
Asian Paints was the sole gainer in the Sensex pack.State-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd was among the few gainers in the Nifty, rising 5.3%, after India’s government invited initial bids on Saturday to buy a majority stake in the oil refining firm.
A sell-off triggered by the economic fallout of the virus outbreak has wiped 9% off the Nifty in the past two weeks, with the drop worsened by the turmoil at Yes Bank, one of the country’s largest lenders.
The virus outbreak has now infected over 107,000 people worldwide, claiming more than 3,300 lives and disrupting business supply chains.
Oil prices plunged around 25% on Monday, heading towards their biggest daily loss since 1991 after Saudi Arabia slashed prices and set plans for a big increase in crude production in April.
“The news flow has been quite pathetic. People are talking about a contraction in global GDP due to the coronavirus,” said Saurabh Jain, assistant vice president of research at SMC Global Securities in New Delhi.
“Nobody has a clue how things will improve going forward.”
Global share markets tumbled on Monday, with the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan losing 3.7% in its worst day since 2015. The Nifty banking index was down 3.7%, hitting its lowest since September.