Sensex plunges 378 pts tracking global weakness; IndiGo bucks trend with 15% rise on debut

Indian stock markets faced the bear onslaught for the fifth straight trading session, missing out on the usual pre-Diwali rally on the Dalal Street, as the rout in US and Asian equities prompted local investors to unwind their position ahead of the holiday-shortened week. In fact, the local markets have now retreated in last 11 out of 12 trading sessions, crashing more than 1,500 points, as the much-touted Bihar elections and the ruling government’s miserable performance in the state poll fueled concerns of a lack of revival in reform activities going ahead. [caption id=“attachment_2424366” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  PTI[/caption] Mirroring the global market weakness, the benchmark Sensex tanked more than 400 points intra-day with worries about lingering economic slowdown in China and Europe coupled with the US Fed strongly pursuing its rate hike in December giving jitters to local investors. Market traders fear a possible rate hike in the US in December could once again trigger fund outflows from emerging markets, including India, which has already witnessed massive FII selling in August and September. Trading below the crucial 26,000-mark for better part of trading session, markets witnessed across-the-board selling with steep correction in commodity stocks dragging the Sensex to the day’s low of 25,709.23, down 412 points. Finally, the 30-share BSE S&P Sensex wrapped up the session at 25,743.26, down 378.14 points, or 1.4 percent from previous close. Similarly, the broader 50-stock CNX Nifty closed lower at 7,783.35, down 131.85 points, or 1.7 percent. Market breadth ended weak, with 1,606 stocks declining as against 1,005 advances on BSE. Globally, the overnight fall in US equities impacted other Asian gauges as well, with China’s Hang Seng ending 1.4 percent lower and Shanghai Composite falling 0.2 percent even as Japan’s Nikkei closed a tad higher. All the three key European indices were trading marginally lower in their mid-day trade. Domestic commodity stocks from the oil & gas and metal space faced the brunt as the global economic slowdown and subdued international prices triggered steep fall in these counters. Shares of ONGC dropped 4.9 percent to Rs 236.95, Reliance Industries eased nearly 4 percent to Rs 921.95, Coal India declined 3.8 percent to Rs 326.40, Vedanta fell 3.7 percent to Rs 90.20 and Tata Steel was down 1.9 percent at Rs 217.95. Other laggards such as Dr Reddy’s Lab, Lupin, BHEL, Sun Pharma, Infosys, SBI, ITC and HDFC ended over 1-4.5 percent each. However, the star performer of the day was the debutant InterGlobe Aviation that runs IndiGo. Bucking the broad market correction trend, the stock today sky-rocketed nearly 15 percent to end at Rs 878.45 with nearly 51 lakh shares traded on BSE. Intra-day, the stock opened higher at Rs 856 over its offer price of Rs 765 and notched up additional gains to scale up 17 percent to a high of Rs 898 before losing some ground in late trades.