Investors lost 1.8 lakh crore in Wednesday's market fall

New Delhi: Investors were robbed of at least Rs 1.8 lakh crore when the BSE Sensex slipped below 14,900 points mid-noon on Wednesday.

After a 900 points climb from 14,800 to 15,500—market men were expecting more buying across the bourses and in fact had gone on to predict Sensex marching on to 16,000 level within a week! But within just two-days of all the promising predictions, markets took a nosedive. Sensex slipped 600, while Nifty fell over 172 points on Wednesday.

The downslide in the stock markets marked one of the most disappointing days for investors. The bourses witnessed their third scariest fall ever and investor wealth eroded by over Rs 1.82 lakh crore in terms of market capitalization. This market cap is of 2600 actively traded companies that are listed on the BSE.

It was really one of the scariest fall ever wherein the market opened on extremely subdued note tracking global peers and traded with deep cut through the day and succumbed to selling pressure sharply in late trade leading to a fall of 615 points on Sensex and 183 points on Nifty.

The fall can be attributed to negative news flow on subprime mortgage worries from the US. Asia also ended in deep red down between 3%-4%. Taiwan saw the highest fall and was down 4.3% followed by Seoul Comp, Jakarta Comp, Strait Times and Shanghai Comp. Europ opened in red, CAC and DAX were down nearly 2% each.

All the BSE sector indices closed in deep red. Realty index was the worst hit down over 6% followed by bank, capital goods, metal and oil & gas downover 4% each. The broader markets also closed in red, with a cut of nearly 4%. All the Sensex stocks closed in the red.

On the F&O side Nifty futures discount widened to 42 points; OI was up 78.9 lakh shares. SAIL was down 5%, added 46.4 lakh shares in open. ITC was down Over 3.3%, added 19.6 lakh shares in open interest and Bharti was down 4.4%, added 17.8 lakh shares in open interest.

Some of the index heavyweights that got hit hardest were Reliance Industries which lost over Rs 13140 crore and Bharti Airtel which shed over Rs 7683 crore. ONGC lost over Rs 6341 crore and DLF's market cap plummetted by over 4577 crore in single day today. IT biggy Infosys lost over Rs 2721 crore in the crash.

With excerpts from a moneycontrol.com report