Sensex crashes 624 pts; YES Bank tanks 11%, RIL surges 10%

Tuesday,   13-Aug-2019   04:00 PM (IST)

Indian shares slipped on Tuesday, dragged lower by telecoms and automotive stocks, as investors remained wary in the absence of any announcement about a government fiscal stimulus package and ahead of key inflation data. The fall in domestic markets was in line with declines in broader Asia, as fears about a drawn out Sino-US trade war, protests in Hong Kong and a crash in Argentina’s peso currency drove investors to safe harbours. The S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 fell 866.67 points and 244.3 points from day's highs to hit a low of 36,888.49 and 10,901.60 respectively in the intra-day trade. The Sensex closed 624 points, or 1.66 per cent, lower at 36,958 levels with 28 of 30 stocks registering losses. YES Bank, M&M< Bajaj Finance, and Bharti Airtel ended the day with deepest cuts while only Reliance Industries and Sun Pharma managed to hold gains. The Nifty50, too, breached the psychological level of 11,000 to settle 184 points, or 1.65 per cent, lower at 10,926 mark. All the sectoral counters ended in the red. Nifty auto index ended 4 per cent lower, followed by financial services (3 per cent) and banking (2.5 per cent) scrips. In the broader market, S&P BSE mid-cap closed at 13,348 level, down 321 points, or 2.35 per cent, THe S&P BSE small-cap, on the other hand, dipped 181 points, or 1.43 per cent, to close at 12,518 levels. Meanwhile, the surprise outcome in Argentina’s primary vote roiled the nation’s financial markets, sending the S&P Merval Index plunging 48 per cent in dollar terms. That marked the second-biggest one-day rout on any of the 94 stock exchanges tracked by Bloomberg going back to 1950. Sri Lanka’s bourse tumbled more than 60 per cent in June 1989 as the nation was engulfed in a civil war.