Sensex tanks 444 points

Bears staged a comeback with vengeance on Monday following fears of earlier than expected rate hike by the US Federal Reserve and losses in global markets.

In what was the biggest one day fall in percentage terms since June 24, the S&P BSE Sensex fell 443.71 points (1.54%) to 28,353.54 while the Nifty 50 ended down 151.1 points (1.7%) at 8715.60. Midcap indices were not spared by the carnage with Nifty Midcap as well as Smallcap 100 indices falling 3% each.

Majority of the sectoral indices ended in the red barring Information Technology index. Hindalco led the list of losers on NSE, ending down nearly 9% at Rs 141.20.

YES Bank continued to trend downwards after last week’s fall, ending down 6% at Rs 1,199.50. Other losers included Tata Steel, Bank of Baroda, Ambuja Cements, Adani Ports, ACC and BHEL, all of which lost between 4-6%. Declines led advances nearly 6:1 on NSE with 1,369 scrips declining and only 241 advancing out of a total of 1674.

Majority of the IT stocks managed to beat the downtrend with all the major IT stocks ending in the green. Infosys led the list of gainers on Nifty 50, ending up 1.88% at Rs 1,055.

Tech Mahindra, Wipro and TCS also ended in the green while RIL also ended in the positive zone with a gain of 0.23% at Rs 1,046.95.