The market breadth was largely in favour of bears as more than seven shares declined for every share rising on the BSE.
Indian shares were at almost five-month low on February 28, as global growth concerns mounted amid rising cases of coronavirus worldwide.
The bears remained firmly in control on Dalal Street for the sixth consecutive session, throwing out the bulls on the last trading day of February and first day of March series.
The BSE Sensex crashed 1,194 points and the Nifty 363.5 points intraday, the biggest single day absolute fall since February 6, 2018. The Sensex crash wiped out more than Rs 5.1 lakh crore of investors’ wealth, taking six-day losses to Rs 11.5 lakh crore.
The BSE Sensex was down 1,094.82 points or 2.75 percent at 38,650.84 and the Nifty50 plunged 331.10 points or 2.85 percent to 11,302.20, at the time of writing of this copy.
The market breadth was largely in favour of the bears as more than seven shares declined for every share rising on the BSE.
After China, which has seen 2,788 deaths and more than 78,824 infections, coronavirus cases have been rising in other countries, fanning fears of a pandemic and making investors jittery.
South Korea is the second largest infected country after China, reporting an additional 256 novel coronavirus cases, taking the total to 2,022 with unchanged death toll of 13. Cases were also reported from New Zealand, Nigeria and Iran, though infected cases and deaths declined in China from where the outbreak began.
The total infected cases across the world stood at 83,342 with 2,858 deaths.
"With cases of the new coronavirus disease rising quickly beyond China, the odds of the outbreak turning into a pandemic have now doubled — from 20 percent to 40 percent,” CNBC-TV18 quoted Moody’s Analytics as saying.
Previous assumption that the virus would be contained in China proved optimistic, and the odds of a pandemic were rising, the report added. It had earlier predicted a 20 percent chance of a pandemic.
Dan Fineman of Credit Suisse told CNBC-TV18 they had cut GDP forecast for China by 0.5 percent. "We should see a much bigger impact on earnings than that 0.5 percent," Fineman said.
In case of India, he said the country was not very much impacted by the virus. "For India, it's more domestic factors that drive our view which is fairly neutral on the market within an Asian context," Fineman said.
World markets reacted sharply, with Dow Jones falling more than 12 percent (3,581 points) in six consecutive sessions. Dow Jones futures fell nearly 300 points on February 28, indicating a weak opening later during the day.
Among Asian counterparts, Japan's Nikkei, Shanghai Composite, Hong Kong's Hang Seng, South Korea's Kospi and Australia's ASX 200 were down 3-4.5 percent.
Back home, more than 300 BSE stocks hit 52-week low, including IndusInd Bank, ITC, Hero MotoCorp, Wipro, M&M, ONGC, L&T, Hindalco Industries and Vedanta.
The broader markets had fallen more than the benchmarks, with Nifty Midcap and Smallcap indices declining 3.5 percent each.
All sectoral indices were trading in the red, with Metal being the biggest loser with 6 percent loss followed by Nifty Bank, Auto, FMCG, IT, Pharma and Realty, which lost 2-4 percent.
