Investors are losing Rs 194 crore (Rs 1.94 billion) in every minute of trade since last Thursday, but there is no alarm.
Investors’ wealth, measured in terms of market capitalisation of all the listed companies in the country, has plummeted by over Rs 3,25,600 crore (Rs 3.25 trillion) in the past five straight sessions, taking it to Rs 61,58,532 crore (Rs 61.58 trillion) at the end of Wednesday’s trading.
Taking into account five hours and 35 minutes of trading in a session, the market has seen a total 1,675 minutes of trading since November 15. The total loss of Rs 3,25,600 crore since that day leads to an average loss of about Rs 194 crore every minute or more than Rs 3 crore every second.
Yet, no sign of panic was not visible on Dalal Street [Get Quote] and a number of marketmen defined the fall as “a buying opportunity” or “healthy correction”.
“Buying opportunity has already set in the front-line stocks and a number of stocks appear to be attractive at current levels,” Premium Investments CEO S P Tulsian told PTI.
“There is no alarm… This is a healthy correction and it was much required after an uptrend for the past two and half months to provide an entry point,” Tulsian noted.
“The fall is mostly due to weakness in the global markets… So far only China and India were holding the ground in a global downtrend, but now even these markets are seeing some impact,” brokerage firm SMC Global vice president Rajesh Jain said.
During the past five trading sessions, the market breadth has been positive on four days and it was only today that number of stocks advancing (22 per cent) was lower than those declining (76 per cent).
Besides, in the first three days of the five-day plunge, mid-cap and small-cap stocks defied the weakness in the blue-chip stocks and outperformed the benchmark Sensex by a wide margin.
The total loss of about Rs 3,25,600 crore includes about Rs 1,00,000 crore (Rs 1 trillion) from the 30 Sensex companies alone, whose total market cap has dropped to Rs 26,18,000 crore (Rs 26.18 trillion).
The Sensex has plunged by about 1,327 points in five days and is over 1,600 points away from its all-time high of 20,238.16 points scaled on October 30.
The 30-share benchmark index dropped 678.18 points to settle at 18,602.62 points. PSU power producer NTPC was the biggest loser with a fall of 7.83 per cent, BHEL fell nearly six per cent, while Reliance Energy [Get Quote], SBI [Get Quote], ICICI Bank [Get Quote] and Maruti [Get Quote] plunged by nearly five per cent on the BSE.
In terms of market capitalisation, Reliance Industries [Get Quote] lost over Rs 9,000 crore (2.33 per per cent), while NTPC lost close to Rs 17,200 crore (Rs 172 billion).
Among other prominent losers, oil and gas major ONGC [Get Quote] and realty giant DLF saw a plunge of close to Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion) each, while Tata Steel [Get Quote] lost Rs 2,745 crore (Rs 27.45 billion).
