Sensex, Nifty Resume Decline After A Day's Pause; Yes Bank Slumps 10%

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes resumed declines for third day after a day's pause in Monday's session. ITC, Tata Consultancy Services, Axis Bank, HDFC and Reliance Industries were among the biggest drags on the Sensex, collectively wiping out nearly 200 points from the index. For most part if the day, benchmarks traded with a negative bias and extended declines amid a broad-based selloff. The Sensex fell as much as 279 points and the Nifty 50 index dropped below its symbolically important level of 11,850.

The Sensex ended 248 points or 0.61 per cent lower at 40,240 and Nifty 50 index declined 0.68 per cent or 81 points to close at 11,857.

Selling pressure was broad-based as all the 19 sector gauges, barring the gauge of telecom shares, ended lower. S&P BSE Utilities index was worst hit in today's session dropping 2 per cent. S&P BSE Power, Oil & Gas, Metal, Information Technology, Industrials, FMCG and Energy sector gauges also fell between 1-1.8 per cent.

Mid- and small-cap shares also witnessed selling pressure as the S&P BSE MidCap and S&P BSE SmallCap indexes dropped over a per cent each.

Yes Bank was top loser in the Nifty 50 basket of shares, the stock declined 10.4 per cent to Rs 50.40 after a Bloomberg report suggested that is likely to reject an offer that made up more than half of its planned $2 billion capital raising, and is talking to institutional investors about making up the shortfall, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Zee Entertainment, GAIL India, JSW Steel, Bharat Petroleum, Power Grid, UltraTech Cement, IndusInd Bank and ITC also fell between 2.5-5 per cent each.

On the flipside, Bajaj Finance, Hindustan Unilever, Cipla, Eicher Motors, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was extremely bearish as 1,718 shares closed lower while 815 ended higher on the BSE.