Sensex Ends A Massive 2,000 Points Lower, Banking Stocks Dive

A cocktail of bad news, including rising tensions between US and China, poor corporate results and increasing Covid-19 cases, dragged the Indian markets lower with the Sensex ending the day more than 2,000 points lower.

Global markets were extremely weak with all round selling seen in the European markets and Asian markets. Dow Futures also pointed to lower openings for the US Markets.

The Sensex ended the day with losses of 2002 points, while the Nifty closed the day with losses of 566 points.

Banking stocks saw some massive selling pressure with the Bank Nifty closing the day almost 8 per cent lower.

Heavyweight financials like HDFC, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank fell between 8 and 11 per cent, pushing the indices lower. Reliance Industries, which was initially very strong in trade, after the company announced that Silver Lake was To Invest Rs 5,655.75 Crore In Jio Platforms dropped almost 2 per cent. The momentum was extremely weak, which saw even good news being sold into.

Over the weekend we had some important quarterly numbers. Hindustan Unilever, which announced its quarterly numbers last week and saw a drop in volumes by a huge 7 per cent, was also punished by investors and fell more than 5 per cent in trade.

The one sector that saw decent gains in trade were the pharma sector with Aurobindo Pharma, Alkem, GSK, Cadilla Healthcare and Cipla all among the gainers.