MUMBAI: It was a frantic Friday afternoon at the BSE Sensex.
The benchmark index plummeted over 1100 points within a matter of minutes, then recovered 900 points, then after a brief pause tumbled again, before finally regaining some of its mojo to end a little over 200 points down.
It all began when investors began dumping financial stocks on the back of rumours that more bad loans might surface.
"Investors are speculating that more bad loans may come to the light as RBI may take stricter action following under reporting of bad loans by some of larger lenders including Yes Bank," news agency Bloomberg quoted Soumen Chatterjee, head of research at Guiness Securities, as saying.
The 30-share index at one point plunged 1127.58 points, or 3.03 per cent, to hit an intra-day low of 35993.64. It, however, recovered nearly 900 points within minutes of the fall.
The index then suffered another fall and was trading almost 600 points lower at 1440 hrs. The broader NSE Nifty fell below the 11000 mark, taking a 367.90 point hit to touch a low of 10866.45, before recovering. But it too began to fall again and was down over 200 points at 1440 IST.
By close of market hours, both the BSE and NSE recovered some lost ground - Sensex ending about 280 points down and the Nifty a little over 90 points.
Heavy selling was witnessed during the day in the realty, healthcare, banking, IT, auto, tech, power consumer durables, FMCG, capital goods, infrastructure, metal and PSU indices, which fell up to 3.65 per cent.
Yes Bank and DHFL both took big hits. This after the Reserve Bank on Wednesday curtailed the term of the bank's founding CEO Rana Kapoor and asked the private sector lender to look for his replacement by January 2019.
Other banking stocks such as PNB, Federal Bank, Bank of Baroda, Kotak Bank and SBI were mauled too.
Other major losers were Adani Ports, Tata Motors, Infosys, Sun Pharma, SBI, Maruti Suzuki and HUL.
Among housing finance stocks, DHFL led the pack and was followed by Indiabulls Housing Finance, Can Fin Homes, PNB Housing Finance and LIC Housing Finance all of which registered significant falls.
| Sensex Top 5 Losers | |||
| Stock | LTP(Rs.) | Change | %Ch. |
| DHFL | 351.55 | -259.05 | -42.43 |
| YesBank | 227.05 | -91.45 | -28.71 |
| INFIBEAM | 181.35 | -53.45 | -22.76 |
| CENTRALBK | 53.35 | -13.30 | -19.95 |
| IL&FSTRANS | 20.05 | -3.80 | 15.93 |
| NSE Top 5 Losers | |||
| Stock | LTP(Rs.) | %Ch | Volume |
| YESBANK | 225.15 | -29.46 | 29,35,52,756 |
| IBULHSGFIN | 1,060.85 | -8.49 | 1,34,91,794 |
| BAJFINANCE | 2,392.90 | -4.27 | 57,50,880 |
| UPL | 666.00 | -3.80 | 51,07,837 |
| KOTAKBANK | 1,185.00 | -3.42 | 45,33,128 |