Sensex Crashes 3,000 Points, Nifty Tests 9,500: 10 Things To Know

HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank were the top drags on the Sensex

At 2:48 pm, the Sensex was down 2,990.83 points or 8.38 per cent at 32,706.57 and Nifty was at 9,553.30 , down 905.10 points - or 8.65 per cent - from its previous close. All the Nifty 50 shares traded lower at the time, with the Nifty Bank - comprising stocks of 12 lenders in the country - down 9.77 per cent.
All the Nifty stocks were trading lower. Bharat petroleum 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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
Market breadth was extremely bearish, with 2,061 shares trading lower against only 145 moving higher on the BSE.
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.
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.
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.

(With inputs from Reuters)