Sensex Falls Over 250 Points, Nifty Below 11,850; Yes Bank Drops 10%

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes extended losses in afternoon trading dragged by losses in Tata Consultancy Services, Reliance Industries, ITC, Axis Bank and HDFC. For most part of the day, benchmarks traded with a negative bias and extended declines on the broad-based selloff. The Sensex fell as much as 279 points and the Nifty 50 index dropped below its symbolically important level of 11,850.

As of 3:4 pm, the Sensex traded 265 points or 0.65 per cent lower at 40,222 and the NSE Nifty 50 index fell 0.73 per cent or 87 points to 11,850.

All the 19 sector gauges compiled by BSE were trading lower led by the S&P BSE Utilities index's 1.7 per cent decline. S&P BSE Power, Oil & Gas, Information technology, FMCG and Energy sector gauges also fell between 0.8-1.5 per cent each.

Mid- and small-cap shares were also witnessing selling pressure as the S&P BSE MidCap index declined 0.9 per cent and the S&P BSE SmallCap index dropped 0.8 per cent.

Yes Bank was top loser in the Nifty 50 basket of shares, the stock declined 10 per cent to Rs 51.50 after a Bloomberg report suggested that is likely to reject an offer that made up more than half of its planned $2 billion capital raising, and is talking to institutional investors about making up the shortfall, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Zee Entertainment, GAIL India, Bharat Petroleum, Bharti Infratel, Tata Consultancy Services, IndusInd Bank, UltraTech Cement and ITC were among the losers.

On the flipside, Eicher Motors, Grasim Industries, Hindustan Unilever, Cipla, Bajaj Finance and UPL were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was extremely negative as 1,654 shares were declining while 738 were advancing on the BSE.