Sensex plunges 1400 pts, Nifty 432 as stock markets blitzed by soaring coronavirus infection fears

Nifty closed in deep red today, down 432 points (over 3%) at 13328, while Sensex closed at 45555 down 3%, or over 1400 points. Bank Nifty fell over 1250 points (down 4%). The rout was seen across the board, led by losses among midcap and smallcap stocks. Other indices that suffered included BSE Midcap Index closing down by over 4%, while BSE Smallcap Index was down over 4.6%. Reason behind market mayhem was not hard to find. Stocks witnessed profit booking at the start of a fresh week especially on account of new coronavirus cases emerging in some parts of Europe, in particular the presence of a much-feared new strain of Covid-19 in the UK.  

In fact, Nifty registered its steepest intraday decline since the start of this uptrend in March. Meanwhile, India's VIX surged 25% today to the highest level in over a month. 

In Midcap space, RBL Bank was down over 9% while Shriram Transport Finance, M&M Finance, L&T Finance, Chola Finance were down 5-7%. Voltas and Zee Ent were down nearly 6%. Balkrishna Industries, Ashok Leyland and TVS Motors were down 5%-6%. Canara Bank was down over 10%, Federal Bank was down 9% while Bank of India was down over 4%. Cummins India and Concor were down 6%. Godrej Properties and Godrej Industries were down 5-6%. 

In Smallcap space, Indiabulls Housing Finance and IB Real Estate were down 8-10%, Force Motors, Igarshi Motors were down over 8-9%, GNFC was down 9%, IRB Infra was down 8%, Nalco was down over 10%,  Sequent Scientific and Shilpa Medicare were down over 6%, SpiceJet was down 10%, SRF was down over 5%.  
ONGC and Tata Motors were down 9%, Gail was down 8% while BPCL was down 7%. Divis Lab was down over 5%. HDFC Life and Hero MotoCorp was down 4-5%.   

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Today's massive fall has caused a strong damage to the short-term technical structure of Nifty. Going forward, until the index crosses its immediate resistance of 13530, we could see near-term downside pressure on the markets. Immediate support for the index now lies at today's low. Break below this is likely to extend correction towards 12800-12730.