Sensex plunges more than 800 points to fall below 64k mark

The BSE Sensex is down by more than 800 points to fall below the 64,000 points mark on Thursday.

Sensex is down by 832 points at 63,216 points in morning trade amid massive selling the markets.

Among the big losers, M&M is down 3 per cent, Bajaj Finance is down 2.8 per cent, Tech Mahindra is down 2.8 per cent, Nestle is down 2.4 per cent, Bajaj Finserv is down 2.4 per cent, Asian Paints is down 2.1 per cent.

Vaishali Parekh, Vice President – Technical Research, Prabhudas Lilladher, said Nifty plunged heavily with profit booking witnessed and extended the losses from the previous session breaching below the crucial 19,200 zone during the intraday session further weakening the bias and sentiment overall.

As mentioned earlier, a breach below 19,200 zone shall trigger for intensified selling pressure with next major support maintained near 18,800-18,600 levels near the 200 period MA. The support for the day is seen at 18,950 levels while the resistance is seen at 19,250 levels, Parekh said.

V.K. Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services said there is risk-off in global equity markets triggered by a combination of economics and geopolitics.

The Israel-Hamas conflict continues to be a major headwind for markets. If the conflict lingers for long it has the potential to impact global growth, too, when the global economy is already in the midst of a slowdown.

In the near-term, however, the strongest headwind for the market is the stubbornly high US bond yields.

With the 10-year bond yield at near 5 per cent FPIs are likely to be in the sell mode. Sectors like banking and IT which constitute the largest segments of the AUM of FPIs are likely to be under pressure. This will provide opportunities for long-term investors to buy quality stocks, particularly in banking, at attractive rates, he added.