Sensex down on China virus fear

Panic selling continued to impact the domestic equity markets on the back of a sporadic sell-off in global indices due to the spread of coronavirus cases around the world.

Additionally, both the domestic and global equity markets got impacted by weak expiry of monthly futures and options (F&O).
Besides, caution prevailed ahead of the release of December quarter GDP data.

The S&P BSE Sensex on Thursday settled lower by 143.30 points or 0.36 per cent to 39,745.66 points from its previous corresponding close.
Similarly, the NSE Nifty50 settled at 11,633.30, lower by 45.20 points or 0.39 per cent.
The sell-off was led by oil and gas and metal stocks.

“Till last week the market was of the view that coronavirus is going to have only a minimum impact on global economy as situation in China was being contained,” said Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services.

“But an increase in the number of new cases is changing the view and there are fears of some slowdown in the economy.” According to Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research for HDFC Securities: “Indian markets corrected further on Friday for the fifth consecutive session. Weekly F&O expiry led to early morning weakness.

A recovery from the lows helped to erase some of the morning losses.” “Market breadth was negative on the BSE, NSE. Sectorally, the top gainers were the BSE CD and Healthcare indices. The top losers were the BSE Realty, Oil and Gas, Metal and IT indices.”

Indo-Asian News Service