Amid the negative sentiment pertaining in the stock markets, as many as 151 stocks listed on NSE hit fresh 52-week lows. Benchmark indices Nifty 50 and Sensex are bleeding red, falling by 87.50 and 312.80 points, respectively at 2.22 pm.

The 151 stocks that touched their 52-week lows included Vodafone Idea, HCL Infosystems, JK Tyres, IDBI Bank, Britannia Industries, IL&FS Transportation, Bosch, DB Realty and Eveready Industries amoung others.

Meanwhile, nearly 200 stocks were trading at 52-week lows on BSE. These included Eveready Industries, Vodafone Idea, Mercator, ABG Shipyard, JBM Auto, Shriram City Union, Reliance Home Finance, Cadila Health, DB Realty, HCL Infosystems, Jyothy Labs, Godrej Consumer, Indiabulls Ventures and Reliance Infra.

Weak global cues on renewed concerns of a trade spat between the US and China have made traders shift from equity to safer instruments like government bonds. Apart from that, withdrawal of nearly Rs 1,400 crore from Indian equity markets by foreign institutional investors so far in the month of May, also hurt the domestic market sentiments.

There have also been increasing concerns of the pledging shares by promoters. Ideally, companies which have a high percentage of their promoter shares being pledged for loans (either for personal or business purposes) are treated as risky stocks especially during tightening liquidity conditions.

Promoters of 116 companies pledged their holdings among the BSE-500 index. These include JK Tyre, Reliance Capital, Reliance Infra, CG Power, Sun Pharma, ZEE Entertainment and JSW Energy as listed by a Kotak study.