Bloodbath On D-Street: Sensex Crashes 1,000 Pts As Market Gives Thumbs Down To Sitharaman's Budget

According to market reports, all sectoral indices of Sensex are trading in the red with the auto, infra and the metal index being the top losers. Sensex was trading over 150 points higher ahead of the Budget presentation.

Top losers in the Sensex pack included L&T, Tata Steel, ONGC, PowerGrid, IndusInd Bank and SBI. (File Photo/ Getty)

New Delhi: Soon after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget for 2020-21 fiscal in Parliament today, negative sentiments hit stock market with BSE Sensex crashing by 1,000 points with massive slumps across sectors. The Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange also shed over 300 points during the intra-day trade. The BSE Sensex settled at 39,735.53, lower by 987.96 points or 2.43 per cent from the previous close of 40,723.49 points. It had opened on 40,753.18 and touched a high of 40,905.78 and a low of 39,631.24 points intraday. Likewise, he Nifty50 closed 318.30 points or 2.66 per cent lower at 11,643.80 points. According to market reports, all sectoral indices of Sensex are trading in the red with the auto, infra and the metal index being the top losers. Sensex was trading over 150 points higher ahead of the Budget presentation. There were expectations that the Budget would fix the long term capital gains (LTCG) tax at 24 months or two years uniformly for all asset classes, which would have benefited the investors. However, no such announcement was made. FM Sitharaman, however, announced the removal of dividend distribution tax (DDT), which is likely to be favourable for the investors. She also pegged the fiscal deficit at 3.8 per cent in the current fiscal, compared to the earlier target of 3.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). In her second Budget presentation, the finance minister did mention that some government securities will be open for foreign investors. Top losers in the Sensex pack included L&T, Tata Steel, ONGC, PowerGrid, IndusInd Bank and SBI. Whereas, HUL, Bajaj Finance, Nestle, TCS and UltraTech Cement were trading higher. The forex market remained closed for the weekend. "Market structure is very weak where it was vulnerable to fall on weak global cues while there was only hope that out of the box budget could reverse the direction of the market but the budget was in line expectations with disappointing on LTCG front. There were no major steps that could boost economic sentiments immediately," said Amit Gupta, CO-Founder and CEO, TradingBells. On the Nifty, the stocks of Tata Consultancy Services, Hindustan Unilever, JSW Steel, Infosys and HCL Technologies traded higher. The budget this year comes at a crucial time as the economy is going through a severe slowdown and consumer sentiments are also significantly subdued.