Red is the colour of the day post budget!
In the afternoon, all the sectoral indices were trading in the negative territory while the Sensex was down 1.9 per cent and Nifty 50 was down 2.32 per cent. On the back of sustained selling by market-participants, the markets are continuing their negative momentum as the equity markets were trading at the day’s low points in the afternoon session.
The Budget 2019-20 lowered the fiscal deficit projection for FY20 to 3.3 per cent from 3.4 per cent targeted in the interim budget in February 2019. A major sell-off in global equities, coupled with rupee’s depreciation against the dollar, managed to pull the indices deeper into the red. The budget proposed Rs 70,000-crore capital infusion into public sector banks (PSBs) which will provide a timely booster to the PSBs and be credit positive for the banking sector and the economy, but the investors paid no heed to the prop.
Adding to the misery, India Meteorological Department data showed that monsoon has covered almost the entire country, but three-fourths of MeT department’s sub-meteorological divisions still fall under the ‘deficient’ rainfall category. On the global front, Asian markets were trading in the red after the US jobs report dashed hopes that the Federal Reserve would slash interest rates this month.
The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 38,704.46, down by 808.93 points or 2.05 per cent. Only three out of 30 stocks were trading in the green. The Nifty 50 was down 2.07 per cent at 11,566.20 level.
Both the BSE Midcap and Small Cap indices were down by over 2 per cent. The top losing sectoral indices on the NSE were Nifty PSU, down by 5.80 per cent, followed by Nifty Realty, which was down by 3.39 per cent.
The top gainers on the Sensex were Yes Bank, up by 5.61 per cent, HCL Technologies, up by 2.25 per cent, and TCS, up by 0.20 per cent. On the flip side, Bajaj Finance was down by 8.32 per cent and ONGC was down by 5.67 per cent. HDFC, L&T, Bajaj Finance and ICICI Bank were the major contributors to the biggest intraday fall of 2019.