Free fall at D-Street; wipes off over Rs 4.5L cr market capitalization

Mumbai: India’s stock market on Friday fell like a pack of cards as the benchmark indices extended the losing streak for third straight day with both BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty closing down over one per cent each mainly on concerns whether US Fed will cut interest rate in its meeting this month and also profit booking by domestic operators.

The BSE Sensex tanked by 1017.23 points (or 1.24%) and closed at 81,183.93 and the Nifty lost 292.95 (1.17%) points to close at 24852.15. Both BSE Sensex and Nifty opened lower over the previous day’s close but came down quickly within few minutes of the stock market’s opening bell.

According to estimates market cap of over Rs 4.5 lakh crore of all listed companies on the bourses is wiped out due to today’s major sell off.

All indices remained red through out the day except Vix or Volatile Index which was up 7.11% at 15.22 showing high range of volatility.

The Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) had turned sellers yesterday as they sold equities in cash segment to the tune of Rs 688 crore while the Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs) had bought equities worth Rs 2970 crore, according to data available.

Sources in the trading community say that a major reason why the stock market worldwide is keenly watching US Fed meeting of this month. Rate cut by 25 bps may not cheer the market but a rate cut of 50 bps or more may inject a lot of extra capital into the markets.

Some of the traders said that prior to the sell-off which started two days ago, the market had rallied for 14 days, indicating that the market has been previously overbought and the profitbooking was overdue.

Both the Mid cap and the small cap indices also slipped 1.41% and 0.96% respectively. In the 30-scrips BSE Sensex, shares of 26 companies declined from their previous close while that of only 4 companies advanced.

The losers were SBI by 4.40% to Rs 782.60, ICICI Bank by 2.09% to Rs 1210.05, NTPC by

2.08% to Rs 395.15, HCL Technology by 1.95% to Rs 1755.50 and Reliance industries by

1.92% to Rs 2929.85.

The gainers included Asian paints by 1.13% to Rs 3274.50, Bajaj Finance by 1.03% to Rs 7317.65, JSW Steel by 0.79% to Rs 932.36 and Hind Unilever by 0.08% to Rs 2838.45.