Monday mayhem on D-Street

Monday mayhem on D-Street

Last week, Sensex wrapped-up the month of April 2020 on a positive note as the index gained by 19.29 per cent during the month. Post this hype up, on Monday, the domestic benchmark indices witnessed a chaotic session as Sensex sunk by 5.94 per cent, which is 2,002.27 points to reach the level of 31,715.35 while, Nifty dipped by 5.74 per cent which is 566.40 points to 9,293.50 level.

Today’s bloodbath at D-street is being considered as one of the worst since the dip witnessed on March 23, 2020. Global economies that were recovering from the impacts of COVID-19 are once again faced with a new feud between US & China. US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a new row of tariffs all along, blaming the Asian country for creating Coronavirus in Chinese laboratory. While India has extended its lockdown for two more weeks, it has been observed that investors now are considering March-end performance of companies and cues from economic data, more than focussing on easing the lockdown restrictions. Mainly, weak economic data such as, India’s low manufacturing PMI data for the month of April, coupled with weak data of corporate earnings reported by big names in various industries and monetary policy meeting by central banks has made the markets to form a cautious opinion. For the first time, auto companies have reported zero auto sales as a result of the lockdown. Taking cues from all these obstacles, volatility saw a sudden rise as India VIX was up by 27 per cent to over 43 levels intraday.

In Sensex basket, only two stocks namely Bharti Airtel and Sun Pharmaceutical advanced by 3.49 per cent and 0.04 per cent while, others declined. Sensex losers were ICICI Bank that closed in red by 10.96 per cent, Bajaj Finance was down by 10.21 per cent, HDFC fell by 10.08 per cent, IndusInd Bank closed down by 9.58 per cent, Tech Mahindra fell by 7.99 per cent, SBI fell by 6.09 per cent, etc.

Amongst sectoral indices, Finance and Bankex plummeted by 8.26 per cent and 8.25 per cent each. Metal fell by 8.23 per cent while, Consumer Durables dropped by 7.13 per cent. Healthcare and Telecom indices gained by 0.21 per cent and 2.39 per cent, respectively.