Sensex tanks over 928 points, 250 stocks hit lower circuit

The biggest single-day fall in two months pushed the Sensex below the psychologically vital 60,000 mark on February 22, as 250 BSE stocks were locked in the lower circuit against 139 scrips in the upper circuit.

The Sensex fell 928 points, or 1.53 percent, to 59,745, and the Nifty50 declined 272 points to 17,554.

The market participants seemed to have turned cautious ahead of the release of the monetary policy minutes of the Reserve Bank of India as well as the US Fed later in the day. Russia’s new warnings to the West added to the worries.

None of 139 stocks that hit the upper circuit were from the so-called Agroup scrips.

Companies that have high liquidity, higher trading volumes, and trade actively on the exchange get included in A group, while B group shares have normal trading volumes and fall under the rolling settlement system.

The group B stocks that hit the lower circuit included Zee Learn, Siti Networks, TGB Hotels, Hubtown, DCM Finserv, PC Jeweller, Umiya Tubes, Poddar Housing and Development, and Vishal Bearings.

However, Peninsula Land, Nintec Systems, Karma Energy, Soma Textiles, Eros Media, Arshiya and MEP were among the B group stocks to hit the upper circuit even as the market ended lower.

As many as 266 stocks hit their 52-week low against 68 stocks at a 52-week high.

The group A stocks that touched fresh 52-week low included Aarti Drugs, Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC, Adani Green Energy, Adani Transmission, Arvind, Adani Total Gas, Bata India, Biocon, Century Textiles, Dollar Industries, Godrej Properties, Graphite India, Ipca Laboratories, Laurus Labs, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, Nippon Life, OnMobile, Rupa, Sequent Scientific, Tata Teleservices, Uflex, Paras Defence and V-Mart.

Investors poorer by Rs 3.87 lakh crore

The bloodbath in the market wiped out nearly Rs 3.87 lakh crore of investors’ wealth as the BSE market capitalisation dropped to Rs 261.22 lakh crore from Rs 265.2 lakh crore in previous session.

Not a single sector escaped the bear attack. BSE commodities, utilities and power were down more than 2 percent each. Consumer discretionary, energy, financial services, industrials, IT, auto, bank, capital goods, metal and oil & gas indices were down between 1.2 and 1.7 percent.

The market breadth was in favour of declines—nearly three shares declined for every rising share on the BSE.

On the BSE Sensex, only ITC managed to close in the green.

Bajaj Finance, M&M, Bajaj Finserv, Reliance Industries, UltraTech Cement, HDFC, Wipro, L&T, Tata Steel, Titan Company, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank were the top Sensex losers.