Corona wipes out `11 lakh cr

With the World Health Organisation declaring Coronavirus a pandemic, investor sentiment took a beating and Dalal Street saw carnage on Thursday. The Sensex suffered its biggest single-day selloff in absolute terms, plunging 3,204 points, or 8.97 per cent, intraday to

32,493 — its lowest point in 23 months. The Nifty plunged nine per cent, or

950 points, intra-day to

9,508, marking its lowest recorded since June 2017.

Registering the biggest single day fall, the Sensex closed down 2,919.26 points, or 8.18 per cent, at

32,778.14 and the Nifty settled at 9,590.15 points, down 868.25 points, or 8.3 per cent.

The carnage in the market wiped out `11 lakh crore investor wea-lth. With markets down 20 per cent from its recent high, experts claim that markets have entered bear territory.

On a net basis, foreign institutional investors sold equities worth

`3,515.38 crore on Wednesday, data available with stock exchanges showed.

The rupee fell to 74.34 per dollar, just 14 paise shy of its record low of

74.48, a level hit in October 2018. Brent crude oil futures plunged 5.76 per cent to $33.73 per barrel intra-day, after the travel ban. All Sensex constituents ended in the red. SBI was the top loser, crashing 13.23 per cent. All 11 sectoral indices compiled by the NSE ended lower, led by the Nifty PSU Bank, down 13 per cent.

“The Nifty 50 is down 22 per cent and incremental pain cannot be ruled out,” said Vikas Jain, senior research analyst, Reliance Securities.

In Thursday's biggest ever market fall, IT, hotel and aviation stocks were the biggest losers due to travel restrictions imposed by the government to contain the coronavirus contagion.

IT stocks fell sharply, with the US and European economies, their main markets, likely to get impacted badly from the coronavirus-led shutdown and travel restrictions. The BSE IT Index fell 8.46 per cent and NSE's Nifty IT Index fell

8.83 per cent against Sensex and Nifty-50's fall of 8.18 per cent and 8.3 per cent, each.

The top losers included TCS (-9.45 per cent), HCL Technologies (-8.18 per cent), Tech Mahindra

(8.32 per cent), Infosys (7.82 per cent) and Wipro (6.54 per cent). L&T Infotech also declined by

9.13 per cent. Offshore operations of IT companies would be hit though their onshore operations may not be affected much, analysts said. The fall, they said, is more sentimental, as IT companies can manage their offshore operations from home as well.

Among hotel stocks, the top losers included EIH (17.46 per cent), Lemon Tree Hotels (-17.07 per cent) and ITC (-11.07 per cent). Indian Hotels, which operates Taj Group of Hotels, recovered after falling 15.49 per cent to Rs

96.55 intra-day to close

3.33 per cent down at Rs

110.45 on the BSE.