Sensex crashes nearly 1,000 points from day's high, Nifty 50 drops below 25,000

Sensex today: The Sensex and Nifty 50 indices erased intraday gains in noon deals and fell sharply lower. The Sensex fell nearly 1,000 points from day's highest level and Nifty 50 index dropped below its important psychological level of 25,000 on the back of selling pressure in index heavyweights like HDFC Bank, NTPC, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, Adani Ports and Larsen & Toubro.

As of 12:14 pm, the Sensex was down 215 points at 81,472 and Nifty 50 index declined 87 points to 24,927.

Market sentiment has turned negative since last week amid rising geopolitical tensions between Iran and Israel which has led foreign institutional investors withdrawing money from Indian markets. FIIs have so far this month sold shares worth Rs 27,142 crore, data from the National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) showed.

Meanwhile, selling pressure was broad-based as all the major sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange, barring the measure of IT shares, were trading lower led by the Nifty PSU Bank index's 2.8 per cent fall. Nifty Oil & Gas, Consumer Durables, Metal, Media, Auto, Bank and Financial Services indices also fell between 0.8-2.25 per cent.

Mid- and small-cap shares were also facing selling pressure as Nifty Midcap 100 index dropped 1.96 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index tumbled 2.55 per cent.

Among the individual shares, Reliance Power shares were locked in 5 per cent lower circuit for second straight session at Rs 48.

Shares of Tata Group-owned jewellery retailer, Titan Company, fell as much as 2.95 per cent to hit an intraday low of Rs 3,555 after the company gave quarterly business update for second quarter of current financial year post market hours on Friday. The company in a regulatory filing said that it registered 25 per cent annual growth and opened a total of 75 stores taking the total store network to 3,171 stores. Titan shares have so far this year declined 2.58 per cent as against 13 per cent surge in the 30-share BSE benchmark Sensex .

Adani Ports was top Nifty gainer, the stock fell 4 per cent to Rs 1,356. NTPC, Coal India, INGC, Power Grid, Adani Enterprises, Bharat Electronics, Hindalco, Shriram Finance, State Bank of India, JSW Steel and Britannia also fell between 1.4-3.4 per cent.

On the flipside, ITC was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 1.63 per cent to Rs 511 after it got approval from NCLT to demerge its hotel business.

Bharti Airtel, Bajaj Finance, Cipla, Infosys, Apollo Hospitals, ICICI Bank and Dr Reddy's Labs were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was extremely negative as 3,313 shares were declining while 609 were advancing on the BSE.