Indian stock markets ended lower on Wednesday ahead of the release of third-quarter GDP data for the financial year 2017-2018 with Sensex losing 162 points and Nifty settling below 10,500-level as shares of HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank dragged the most. Shares of the fraud-hit Punjab National Bank managed to recover some of its losses after hitting a new 20-month low in the early morning trades. In fact, all the components of Nifty PSU Bank index closed in green barring Bank of India while stocks of PNB, Syndicate Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Indian Bank surged 3-7%. The stock of India’s second largest IT company Infosys emerged as the only notable gainer in Wednesday’s session rising over 2%.
Almost all the sectoral and broader indices of National Stock Exchange settled in the red with Nifty Next 50, Nifty 100, Nifty 200, Nifty 500, Nifty Midcap 50, Nifty Mid100 Free and Nifty Small100 Free shedding up to 0.6% while amid the sectoral indices, Nifty Bank, Nifty Financial Services, Nifty Private Bank, Nifty Metal, Nifty Media, Nifty FMCG, Nifty Auto, Nifty Pharma and Nifty Realty declined up to 1.4% while Nifty IT and Nifty PSU Bank index gained 0.49% and 0.71% respectively. The S&P BSE Sensex ended at 34,184.04, down by 162.35 points or 0.47% whereas NSE Nifty washed off 61.45 points or 0.58% to conclude below 10,500 at 10,492.85.
Shares of Infosys went up by 3.56% to a day’s high of Rs 1,189.2 before settling 2.26% higher at Rs 1,174.25 on BSE. Amid the profit-booking, shares of HUL (down 2.02%), ICICI Bank (down 1.92), Sun Pharma (down 1.75%), M&M (down 1.62%), Axis Bank (down 1.62%), Yes Bank (down 1.47%), L&T (down 1.4%), NTPC (down 1.36%), HDFC Bank (down 1.27%), Bharti Airtel (down 0.86%), Tata Motors (down 0.71%) and HDFC (down 0.69%) were the major laggards out of the Sensex components today. During the day, the benchmark Sensex hovered between the range of 34,302.74 and 34,076.45.
Shares of the fraud-hit Punjab National Bank closed up 3.05% at Rs 101.35 after the stock plunged about 6.5% to a fresh 20-month low of Rs 92 in the morning deals. Again, a heavy trading volume was witnessed in the shares of PNB, at the end of trades, nearly 22.75 crore shares exchanged hands on both NSE and BSE with about 21.07 crore shares on NSE alone, as per the data available with the stock exchanges. Shares of PNB have been broadly eroded value since after the state-run lender had informed about the fraudulent and unauthorised transactions totalling Rs 11,394 crore and faced another jolt in yesterday’s session after the bank said that the fraud amount may scale up by Rs 1,323 crore. In the past 11 days of heavy trading activity, the stock of PNB had shed 37%.