While the bellwether indices made a smart recovery when they re-opened after hitting the lower circuit, many stocks continued to be in the red.
On Friday, 175 stocks in the BSE 500 closed in the red. Stocks that lost the most include — Future Retail, Varroc Engineering, Centrum Capital, SpiceJet, Godrej Agrovet, GE T&D, Care Ratings and Bajaj Consumer Care.
None spared
In the market rout across the globe, even the safest asset classes have not been spared. Led by crude, all commodities have dropped.
The Reuters CRB Commodity Index is down 9 per cent since last Friday. Investors who took shelter in gold and other precious metals as equity markets took a beating, have taken a hit. Over the last one week, while gold and silver are down 6 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, platinum is down 12 per cent. Palladium has fallen by a sharp 24 per cent.
Bitcoin, which was being viewed as a ‘safe-haven’ and moving higher with gold, has been battered badly over the last few market sessions. The cryptocurrency is down about 40 per cent (bitcoin/USD) since last week — outpacing the loss in most other asset classes.
Investors globally have been selling bonds to finance equity positions or losses in other assets. The US Treasury (10-year) yield has risen sharply since last Friday. It is up from 0.74 per cent to 0.88 per cent now.
It appears that over-leveraged traders are selling all assets to meet margin calls.
The rupee has been weakening since the beginning of the year against the US dollar, and on Friday hit a record low of 74.50.
However, after the RBI’s dollar sell/buy swap announcement, the rupee recovered smartly. At 73.9 against the greenback, the rupee has not changed much in value from a week earlier (73.78).
A weaker rupee is good for Indian investors in gold (as the asset is denominated in dollars), but, in the last one week, the gold portfolio of Indian investors has also been down 5 per cent.