Sensex plunges sharply over confrontation between North Korea, US

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, September 22

The stock markets plunged sharply on Friday amidst concerns of a confrontation between North Korea and the United States, brokers and analysts said wiping out nearly Rs 2.73 lakh crore of investors’ wealth.

The benchmark Sensex fell 447 points to close at 31922 points while the Nifty fell 157 points below the psychological 10,000 mark to close at 9964 points at the end of the day’s trading.

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Adding to investors’ worries the rupee also fell to a six-month low against the dollar to 65.15 amidst concerns of widening fiscal deficit.

“Sentiment in the market is low with international markets all closing in the red. The markets could go down further if margin calls of traders are activated,” Abhishek Singhal, a technical analyst said.

Among the biggest losers in today’s trading included ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, L&T, HDFC Bank, SBI, Infosys, Axis Bank, ITC, HDFC, Hero MotoCorp, Hindustan Unilever, Tata Steel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, TCS, and Sun Pharma.

In the broader markets, the fall in the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were even sharper at 3 per cent each. Reliance Capital, Indiabulls Real Estate, Graphite India, HEG, Jindal Steel, Wockhardt, Ipca Labs, Alembic Pharma, Torrent Pharma, SPARC, Walchandnagar, Tinplate, Jai Corp, Peninsula Land and Future Enterprises were down
between 7 and ten per cent.

According to analysts, today’s sell-off was mainly by foreign portfolio investors who have been liquidating their holdings over the past several sessions.