Markets Close in Red: Sensex, Nifty End at Four-Year Low

Large parts of India have been placed under lockdown starting Monday to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo: Reuters)

Indian equity benchmarks continued their fall on Monday, 23 March, with BSE Sensex down 3,934.72 points (13.15 percent) at 25,981.24 and NSE Nifty down 1,135.20 points (12.98 percent) at 7,610.25.

These are now the lowest levels since 2016, according to BloombergQuint.

Market breadth remained adverse with 1,703 stocks ending the day with losses while only 129 closed with gains.

Stock exchanges had earlier paused trading for 45 minutes after Sensex plunged 10 percent, hitting its lower circuit limit, within the first hour of opening of the session. As an automatic mechanism to curb freefall in the market, trading is halted in the market for 45 minutes when an exchange plunges 10 percent before 1 pm.

The crash in the markets come amid concerns over the coronavirus outbreak.

At the opening on Monday, Sensex had nosedived 2,718 points to 27,197, while Nifty tanked 720 points to 8,024, as large parts of India were placed under lockdown to curb the spread of the highly contagious virus, which has infected at least 415 people across the country.

All the constituents of the Nifty and Sensex had opened with losses, as did all the sectoral indices.

(With inputs from BloombergQuint and PTI.)