Mumbai: Indian capital markets witnessed a massive downslide on Monday, May 4. While the major reason for the same happened to be escalated tensions between US and China, poor earnings of corporates for Q4 FY2020 weighing down investors’ sentiments also added fuel to the fire. The S&P BSE Sensex hit a low of 31,632.02 down by 2,085.60 points during intra-day compared to the previous closing of 33,717.62 on April 30. On the other hand, NSE Nifty 50 hit a low of 9,266.95 during intra-day trading. While the Sensex closed at 31,715.35 down by 2,002.27 points or 5.94 per cent, Nifty 50 ended at 9,293.50 down by 566.40 points or 5.74 per cent. “Indian equity indices broke a 4-day winning streak and recorded their biggest one-day fall in over a month reflecting the weakness in global markets over the last two trading sessions. Weak global cues, poor macro data locally, the latest US China spat and poor corporate earnings led to this fall. NSE Nifty 50 gave up half of the gains made during the previous week, ending at 9,293, down 5.7 per cent,” says Deepak Jasani, Head Retail Research, HDFC Securities.
Further the broader markets including, BSE-mid-cap and small-cap witnessed a decline by 4.25 per cent and 3.14 per cent, respectively. Some of the sectors, which were in red were metals (-8.23 per cent), IT (-4.93 per cent), oil and gas (-3.94 per cent) and banking (-8.25 per cent), which witnessed a heavy selling pressure during the day. “Bears took charge as the Indian markets registered a sharp decline of ~5.7 per cent in today’s session led by feeble global cues and subdued earnings season. Broader markets were also not spared as both the indices registered losses of 4.3 per cent and 3.1 per cent. On the sector front, except healthcare, which ended flat, all the other indices ended with losses wherein banking, metals and consumer durables were the top losers,” says Ajit Mishra, VP, Research, Religare Broking.