The Reserve Bank of India’s recent move to increase repo rates continues to spook Indian equities.
The Sensex closed 362.75 points or 1.79 per cent lower at 19,900.96. The Nifty index was down by 2.04 per cent at 5889.75
"The markets continued their downward spiral today, the Sensex dropping 2 per cent and below the psychologically important 20,000 mark as banking stocks continued to reel from the unexpected announcement by the RBI on Friday…” said Raghu Kumar, Cofounder of online brokerage firm RKSV.
“Despite the fact that the RBI tried to counter the Repo rate hike by lowering the MSF rate (the rate that at which banks can borrow from the RBI) by 75 basis points, the banking sector is still attempting to come to terms with Friday's announcement, with Bank Nifty plunging 450 points,” he said
Among sectoral indices, Consumer Durables (up 2.36 per cent) Information Technology (up 0.91 per cent), and TecK (up 0.43 per cent) led the charge on the BSE. Top losers were Bankex (down 4.41 per cent), Realty (down 4.33 per cent) and Capital Goods (down 3.28 per cent)
On Nifty, Sesa Goa, HCL Technologies and Hindalco were the chief gainers while Bank of Baroda, DLF and Axis Bank were the main losers.