Sensex Sheds 580 Points, Nifty Ends Below 12800; SBI Down 4%

In the last hour of trade, benchmark indices saw sharp sell-off, triggered primarily by huge fall in banking stocks. At the close Nifty was down 1.29 per cent or 166.55 points at 12771.7, while Sensex shed 580 points or 1.31 percent to close at 43599.96. Broader markets however performed better with Nifty Midcap 100 declining only 0.64%

Day's top gainer on the Sensex include stocks such as Power Grid, ITC, NTPC, Tata Steel and Titan while laggards have been mostly from the banking pack like SBI, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and UltraTech Cement. In intra-day trade Kotak Mahindra Bank hit new 52-week high.

Nifty Bank closed with losses of 2.85% after the SC deferred hearing on interest waiver till next week.

Shares in Pfizer company ended higher by 3% after the company's parent firm Pfizer Inc said that its experimental vaccine against Covid 19 is 95% percent effective in the final evaluation of the phase 3 trial that was performed on even people aged more than 65 years.

HeroMoto Corp also gained 5% in trade today after the two-wheeler major reported healthy sales during festive season. In the just ended festive season the company sold over 14 lakh 2Ws. But ended the session only marginally higher

L&T shares ended lower by over 1% even after the company's construction arm bagged another major contract from the NHSRCL for taking over the construction work of Bullet Train Project.

Meanwhile European markets were trading with losses with German DAX down the most by 0.95%, while French CAC and London FTSE also traded weak by 0.88 and 0.92 percent, respectively. Also, US stock futures which were dragged by up to 0.58% on Nasdaq pointed to lower opening for the US markets.

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