Markets bleed again as virus spooks investors

Mumbai: The Sensex crashed below the 29,000-level while the Nifty dived almost 500 points on Wednesday as the coronavirus pandemic maintained its death grip on markets across the globe.

S&P lowering India's growth forecast and the Supreme Court's refusal to provide relief to telecom firms on the AGR issue further sapped risk appetite, traders said.

After swinging over 2,488.72 points in a highly volatile session, the 30-share BSE Sensex closed 1,709.58 points or 5.59 per cent lower at 28,869.51.

The Sensex has closed below the 29,000-mark for the first time since January 2017.

On similar lines, the broader NSE Nifty plummeted 498.25 points, or 5.56 per cent, to end at 8,468.80.

Barring ONGC and ITC, all Sensex constituents finished in the red.

IndusInd Bank was the top loser, diving 23.90 per cent, followed by PowerGrid (11.29 per cent), Kotak Bank (11.23 per cent), Bajaj Finance (11.11 per cent), HDFC Bank (9.92 per cent) and NTPC (8.08 per cent).

Earlier in the day, S&P Global Ratings lowered India's economic growth forecast to 5.2 per cent for 2020, saying the global economy is entering a recession amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The agency had earlier projected a growth rate of 5.7 per cent during the 2020 calendar year.

Asia-Pacific economic growth in 2020 will more than halve to less than 3 per cent as the "global economy enters a recession", S&P said in a statement.

Banking and telecom stocks came under heavy selling pressure after the Supreme Court pulled up the telecom companies for doing self-assessment of the Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues fixed by the apex court in its verdict on October 24 last year. The telecom companies have to clear all dues mentioned in the judgement, the court said.

All sectoral indices closed with losses, with BSE telecom, finance, utilities, bankex, power, realty and auto tanking up to 9.48 per cent. The BSE midcap index fell 0.73 per cent, while the smallcap gauge crashed 6.09 per cent.