4-day selloff on Dalal Street leaves investors poorer by Rs 15 lakh crore

Twin fears of rising Covid cases and Fed rate hikes rippled through the indices acting like a Christmas party pooper for investors. Sensex lost nearly 1,000 points taking cumulative losses in the last four days to 1,961 points.

Meanwhile, the market capitalisation of all listed companies on the BSE declined by Rs 14.86 lakh crore to Rs 272.53 lakh crore in the last four days.

Sensex ended 981 points lower at 59,845.29, while Nifty50 ended at 17,806.80 on Friday.

In the Sensex pack today, , , and were the top losers, falling 3-5%. , , , L&T, , and also closed lower. On the other hand, only closed with gains.

Sectorally, Nifty PSU Bank fell over 6%, Nifty Media declined 5%, Nifty Metal 4.47%. Whereas, realty and oil & gas also dropped over 3%. In the broader market, Nifty Midcap50 fell 3.35% and Smallcap50 declined 4.66%.

“Markets were caught in frenzied selling as weak global cues and bearish external factors pushed both the key benchmark indices below the psychological levels. Besides the spurt in Covid cases in China & Japan, the better than expected US Q3 GDP numbers further raised concerns that the Fed will go for more rate hikes to tame inflation, which further accentuated selling pressure in the markets,” Amol Athawale, Deputy Vice President - Technical Research at Kotak Securities said.

“Technically, after a long time the index closed below the 50 day SMA (Simple Moving Average) and also formed a long bearish candle on weekly charts, which is broadly negative. For traders, as long as the index is trading below 18,000, the correction wave is likely to continue and below the same, the index could slip till 17,600-17,500,” Athawale added.

More to come...