Indian bourses went into tailspin on Friday after a widespread panic sell-off spooked by fresh measures to curb capital outflow to stem forex volatility and narrow down worsening CAD.
The benchmark Nifty cracked by a whopping 234.45 points, or 4.08 per cent to finish at 5,507.85, recording its steepest fall in four-years on National Stock Exchange (NSE).
The rupee hit a new historic low and briefly surpassed the 62 mark to the US dollar in early trade, despite a combination of measures taken by the government and the RBI in recent past, literally rattled investors confidence.
Today's sell-off, however, was mainly triggered by RBI's latest step to defend the rupee announced on Wednesday in way of capital control measures to fight the dangerously-high current account deficits and rebuild market confidence and defend the free-falling currency amid fears of a downgrading.
Sluggish global market tides after a sharp meltdown in Wall Street overnight on the back of strong US macro-economic data fuelled fears that the Federal Reserve would start withdrawing its stimulus earlier than expected, further dampened overall sentiment.
The four-session bull rally on the bourses suddenly reversed its course as panic selling wrecked bourses on account of frantic unwinding of positions by foreign funds and bulk of institutional selling alongwith domestic investors.
The sell-off was so fierce that all sectoral indices ended with huge losses. Financials stocks bore the brunt of the selling followed by FMCG, energy, technology, healthcare, auto, metal and infra related counters.
JP Associates, BHEL, Axis Bank, Bank of Baroda, PNB, Reliance Infra, DLF, Indusind Bank, Tata Steel and Sesa Goa were the worst performers from the index. However, Heromotoco, Power Grid and HCL-Tech withstood the selling pressure and gained marginally.
Turnover in the cash segment jumped to Rs 13,875.36 crore from Rs 11,407.43 crore on Wednesday. A total of 6,812.93 lakh shares changed hands in 77,33,515 trades. The market capitalisation stood at Rs 59,13,877 crore.
