Mumbai : A day after bloodbath, the benchmark BSE Sensex managed to end 34 points higher at 22,986.12, but logged its biggest weekly fall in over six years as fears of a global slowdown and disappointing quarterly numbers of blue-chips, especially banks, hammered stocks during the week.
Investors are fleeing risky assets and running to safe havens like gold and bonds.
Both the indexes recorded their biggest weekly fall since July 2009 with Sensex falling 1,631 points or 6.62% and Nifty down 508.15 points or 6.78 %. Moreover, since the start of the year, the Sensex has lost around 3,131.42 points or 12 % and logged weekly fall in five out of six weeks since then.
The Sensex has come off more than 23 % from its all-time peak of over 30,000, scaled nearly a year ago.
The finance minister blamed the fall in the domestic markets on chain reaction caused by a major sell-off in global markets. “There has been a major sell-off in the global markets. Obviously this has created a chain reaction across the world, and Indian markets are also significantly impacted by this,” Arun Jaitley said. “As a reaction to various international developments taking place, there need not be any exaggerated panic in India for the reason that India as an economy even in the midst of a global slowdown has stood out,” Jaitley said.
Overseas, Asian stocks fell as investors continued to dump riskier assets. Nikkei tumbled 4.84 %, while Hong Kong and South Korea indexes fell sharply by 1.22 % and 1.41 %, respectively.
Next week, focus will be more on global markets, particularly China, which will re-open on Monday after remaining shut this week for Lunar New Year holidays.
