1. Nifty slows down at 11 am today
The shares of ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank were all down this morning. Axis Bank’s shares crashed 20 % on the nifty 50 index whereas the rest of the banks and Adani ports were down by 15 percent each. ICICI bank’s shares slumped 15 %, thus hitting an all-time low in 20 years. The stock tumbled at Rs. 293.85 on the BSE. Along with these, banks and financial services firms became the worst hit on Sensex.
Hero MotoCorp also experienced a 14 percent downfall.
2. US stocks suffer
Wall Street suffers amidst all the stringent restrictions bought by New York and California to stop the spread of COVID 19. Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 plummeted more than four percent on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid to 913.21 points, which is 4.55 percent. S&P 500 fell 104.47 points or 4.34% and closed at 2,304.92. Amongst other being affected was Nasdaq Composite, which lost 271.06 points or 3.79% and closed at 6,879.52.
3. Asian shares slip
Hang Seng Index in China dropped almost 4%, SGX Nifty tumbles nearly 12 %, Kospi in Korea slumped over 4 % while the Shanghai Composite Index was lower by 2%. Japan’s Nikkei, however, was an exception midst of bad news and was up by 0.5 %.
4. Stocks to be watched
After Maruti Suzuki’s announcement on Sunday to put a halt to manufacturing in two of its factories in Gurugram and Manesar, the shares to focus on are- Religare enterprises, IRCTC, Mahindra & Mahindra and l&t fiancé holdings.
5. The Indian rupee experiences a record low
Rupee opened at an all-time low of 75.68 against the dollar. On Friday it had closed at 75.20.
6. Maruti Suzuki tanks
Maruti Suzuki’s (1) shares slumped almost 13% owning to its decision to shut down two manufacturing units in Haryana.
7. Bharat Forge operations halted
Bharat Forge announced at 10:19 am today, that it will be stopping all activities at its offices and also factories amidst the lockdown till 31st march. This caused the shares to go down 9.7 % at Rs. 272.25 on the BSE.
8. Asian Paints suspends operations
Asian Paints plans to shut all its manufacturing units down and all sales locations in India within the next 24 hours. All its employees have been asked to stay at home and work from there. The shares of the company slipped down 7.8% at Rs. 1,610 on the BSE.
9. Respite for Bajaj Auto employees
Bajaj Auto MD announced that there would be no salary cuts or job cuts as an aftereffect of its production units being closed to contain the spread of the virus.
Most of the companies have decided to shut down its factories and sales locations to prevent coronavirus from spreading further, and this caused shares to tumble.
