Equity investors lost around Rs 3 lakh crore on Monday as the benchmark indices took a deep dive. Continuing its downtrend from the morning session, benchmark Sensex and Nifty indices plunged around 2 per cent each in the afternoon.
Nifty later recovered marginally to settle at 17,173.65 or 1.73% down from its previous closing of 17,475.65 on Wednesday. Sensex closed 1,172.19 points down or 2.01% from its previous closing of 58,338.93.
Equity markets were closed on Thursday and Friday on account of Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Jayanti/Mahavir Jayanti and Good Friday, respectively.
A rise in inflation, as well as a fresh spike in global crude oil prices, seemed to have dented investors' sentiment. Consumer Price Index or retail inflation rose steeply in March to 6.95 per cent, which was above the Reserve Bank of India's upper tolerance band of 6 per cent for three consecutive months.
Also, earnings of HDFC Bank and Infosys for Q4 coming short of market expectations hurt investor confidence. Shares of Infosys declined more than 7% to Rs 1,622 apiece on the NSE and Rs 1,623 on the BSE after its Q4FY22 results came below expectations. HDFC Bank too performed poor, falling more than 4.50 per cent on the NSE and BSE to trade below Rs 1,400 per scrip.
Other major drags on the Sensex pack were HDFC (down by 4.83%), TCS (down by 3.63%), Tech Mahindra (down by 4.69%), Wipro (down by 3.67%), HCL Tech (down by 1.99%), SBI (down by 1.57%) and Bharti Airtel (down by 1.47%). NTPC and Tata Steel were the top gainers. While NTPC was up by 6.11%, Tata Steel jumped by 1.51% on account of share split news.
On the NSE, shares of major companies declined 5 per cent and 7 per cent. Other than Infosys, the major drags were HDFC Bank (4.74%) and HDFC (4.83%), Apollo Hospital (4%), Tech Mahindra (4.67%), Wipro (3.68%), TCS (3.66%), HCL Tech (2.08%) and SBI (1.58%).
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