Sensex and Nifty recovered after the latter hit 10% circuit filter in early trade today. Weak sentiment on Dalal Street improved marginally after market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued a statement saying, "SEBI and Stock Exchanges have a robust risk management framework in place which automatically gets triggered in response to movements in the indices (BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty) as well as individual stocks both in cash and derivatives market."
On the market crash today, the market regulator said, "SEBI and Stock Exchanges are prepared to take suitable actions as may be required."
At 9:20 am, Nifty plunged 10% to 8,625, down 966 points or 10.07%.
Sensex also plunged 3,090 points or 9.43% in early trade compared to its previous close of 32,778. This triggered a halt in trading for 45 minutes on both Sensex and Nifty.
Sensex and Nifty recovered some lost ground when market reopened at 10:20 am.
That took into account 15 minutes of preopen trade.
At 10:55 am, Sensex was trading 110 points lower at 32,667 and Nifty was down just 96 points at 9,503.
In its statement, the market regulator said, "Over the last few days, Indian stock market has been moving in tandem with other global markets owing to concerns relating to COVID-19 pandemic, resultant fear of economic slowdown, recent fall in global crude prices, etc."
Market trading halted for 45 minutes after Nifty slides 10%
Sebi compared fall in global markets with domestic indices and said the crash in the Indian indices has been significantly lower than the stock markets in other countries.
In a move to instill confidence, Sebi said stock markets in Russia (36%), Brazil (36%), France (30.35%), Germany (29.43%), Argentina (29.31%), UK (28.12%), Dow Jones in US (25%) have lost significantly when compared with Sensex (19.51%) and Nifty (19.83%) from January 31, 2020 to March 12, 2020.