Sensex tanked over 1,800 points in afternoon trade today amid a sell-off in global markets. While Sensex crashed 1,848 points to 49,191, Nifty slipped 543 points to 14,554. On Thursday, Sensex ended 257 points higher at 50,039 and Nifty gained 115 points to 15,097.
Global markets fell after rising bond yields triggered a broad sell-off on Wall Street. Nasdaq fell 3.5% on Thursday while the S&P 500 dropped 2.4%, led lower by heavy selling in technology and communications companies.
Asian markets followed suit with Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney all falling 2% or more in early trading Friday. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 lost 2.4% to 29,446.17, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong lost 2.2% to 29,412.50. The Shanghai Composite index lost 1.5% to 3,530.08. South Korea's Kospi declined 2.8% to 3,012.11. The S&P/ASX 200 slipped 2% to 6,695.60.
At home, banking stocks led the losses with bank Nifty shedding 1,707 points to 34,842.
On Nifty, 42 stocks fell while 8 manged to remain in green.
Top Nifty losers were IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC , ICCI Bank and HDFC Bank falling up to 4.50%. On the other hand, UltraTech Cement, Sun Pharma and Dr Reddy's were the top gainers rising up to 1%.
The fall in market impacted the rupee too, with the currency opening 62 paise lower at 73.04 per dollar today.
Stocks in news: RailTel, Bharti Airtel, Infosys, HCL Tech, SBI, Ashok Leyland, DHFL
Of 30 Sensex stocks, 25 traded in the red. Top Sensex losers were ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC, IndusInd Bank and HDFC Bank falling up to 4.5%.
The BSE midcap index plunged 368 points to 19,965 against previous close of 20,333. BSE small cap index, which hit a record high yesterday, slumped 234 points to 20,070 against previous close of 20,304.
On a sectoral basis, BSE bankex was the top loser shedding 1,904 points to 39,078 against previous close of 40,977. All 19 BSE sectoral indices were trading in the red. Other sectoral losers were BSE auto and BSE consumer durables indices falling over 500 points each.
Market breadth was negative with 807 stocks rising against 1,860 falling on BSE. 141 stocks were unchanged. However, number of stocks hitting 52 week high rose to 165 against 16 falling to their 52 week lows.