Sensex down over 500 points to five-month low, Nifty hovers around 10,800
New Delhi: The BSE Sensex and the Nifty fell to a fresh five-month low on Monday, led by losses in public sector bank, metals stocks following a global sell-off as trade war feats between the US and China escalated. The Chinese yuan broke below the psychological 7-per-dollar threshold after US President Donald Trump abruptly decided on Thursday to slap 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese imports.
The BSE Sensex fell as much as 700 points to an intraday low of 36,416.79 while the Nifty fell to 10,782.60. As of 1:57 pm, The BSE Sensex was lower by 1.45% or 540 points at 36,578.20 and the Nifty was down 166 points or 1.51% at 10,831.45
Domestic investor sentiment in equities, which seemed to be upbeat on Friday after reports said the government was looking into foreign portfolio investors’ tax concerns, returned to being bearish due to the escalating trade war.
Most of the sectors were trading in the red. Among Nifty 50 stocks, only seven stocks were in the green while the remaining were in the red. Yes Bank was the top loser in Nifty, down 6.23%, followed by Power Grid Corp, Tata Motors, SBI and Indiabulls Housing Finance. Reliance Industries, Hindalco, Tata Steel were the other prominent losers in the Nifty
The Nifty public sector bank index plummeted as much as 5.12%, while the metals index sank as much as 3.9%, their lowest in over three years. The Nifty autos index slithered down about 1.9%. Out of the stocks registered on NSE, 1251 were in the red while 363 were in the green.
Nifty IT was the only index trading higher, boosted by the weak rupee. The rupee fell to 70.58 against the US dollar, its biggest intraday fall in this year.
Other than trade war concerns, fears of a slowdown in the domestic economy also impacted investor’s sentiment.
Most of the Asian shares ended with losses between 1.3-3%. European equity indices also opened lower. The FTSE fell 2.07% while the DAX slid 1.66%.
