20K & beyond: Sensex, Nifty hit new highs; mid- and small-caps tumble
Mid-cap and small-cap shares crumbled on Tuesday, leading the sell-off in the stock market, as worries about these segments being overheated after the recent record-breaking rally prompted investors and traders to dump them.
The Nifty Midcap 150 index dropped 3% and Nifty Small-cap 250 fell 3.9%, Nifty Microcap 250 declined 5.2% on Tuesday — their biggest single-day declines since December 23, 2022.
NSE's Nifty ended 3.15 points lower at 19,993.2 after hitting an all-time high of 20,110.3 earlier in the day. BSE's Sensex gained 94 points or 0.14% to close at 67,221.1 — a new record closing.
Both benchmark indices had closed at all-time highs on Monday too with the Nifty crossing 20,000 for the first time ever.
The Volatility Index, or VIX, rose 3% to 11.69, suggesting traders see near-term risks in the market.
In addition to concerns over valuations, speculation of a French bank-backed fund offloading its mid-cap portfolio also triggered panic in the market. One of the theories doing the rounds was that the fund sold Rs 3,000 crore worth of mid-cap shares in the rumoured sell-off.
This could not be independently ascertained.
Wall Street Inches Lower
Wall Street's main indexes fell on Tuesday as Oracle shares slumped, while investors awaited key inflation readings later this week for clues on the Federal Reserve's interest-rate path. Cloud-services provider Oracle dropped 11.5% to its lowest intra-day level in a month, after forecasting current-quarter revenue below targets and narrowly missing first-quarter expectations.
