The Sensex on Monday slipped to 1.5% at the Bombay Stock Exchange in the early trade. Certain auto and realty sector companies are believed to have dragged the Sensex down, owing to overall gloom in the global economy.
As the country braced for an extension of the 21-day lockdown to contain the spread of coronavirus, market sentiment was hit with global crude oil prices jumping by more than one dollar a barrel after top producers agreed to their biggest-ever output cut.
ALSO READ: COVID-19: Top 10 global developments this Monday morning
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was down by 508 points or 1.63% at 30,652 while the Nifty 50 edged lower by 137 points or 1.5% at 8,975.
Except for Nifty pharma, all sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the red with Nifty auto skidding by 4.6%, realty by 4.2%, financial service by 3.1% and private bank by 2.8%.
Among stocks, Mahindra & Mahindra dropped by 6.8% to Rs 355.25 per share while Maruti lost by 5.9%, Bajaj Auto by 4.6% and Hero MotoCorp by 3.6%.
Bajaj Finance fell by 7.9%, Bajaj Finserv by 4.8%, Titan by 5%, ONGC by 4.4% and Axis Bank by 4.2%.
However, pharma majors Dr Reddy’s and Cipla gained by 2.2% and 1.5% respectively. Bharti Airtel, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro and Tata Consultancy Services too traded with a positive bias.
Meanwhile, global shares fell as investors looked for more signs of economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic. The Nikkei fell by 1.4% while MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan slipped slightly, with South Korean shares falling by 0.9%.
Financial markets Hong Kong were closed while in mainland China, the CSI300 index lost by 0.6% in early trade.
A group of oil producing countries known as OPEC+ which includes Russia said it had agreed to reduce output by 9.7 million barrels per day for May and June after four days of marathon talks.
International benchmark Brent futures LCOc1 rose by 5.5% to 33.22 dollars per barrel.
(With agency Inputs)