US election jitters drag Sensex 349 pts; ONGC down 4%, M&M up 3%

Equity benchmarks caught in bear grip on Wednesday, with the Sensex falling 376 points intraday as US elections jitters dampened the global markets sentiment. Investors also maintained cautious stance ahead of outcome of the two-day Federal Reserve meeting tonight.

Benchmark indices ended at over 3-month closing lows. The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 349.39 points or 1.25 percent at 27527.22 and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 112.25 points or 1.30 percent to 8514.

The volatility will rise until the expectation on US election result is really factored in, Vinod Nair of Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services says.

According to him, the US Federal Reserve is likely to maintain the key rates but market is focusing on any signs of rate hike trajectory.

If there are no shocks in terms of US Presidential elections verdict or border tensions in India, then the 50-share Nifty could find a bottom at 8,450-8,500 levels, Gautam Shah of JM Financial says.

He believes the next few weeks would present good buying opportunities with risk-rewards becoming pretty lucrative sub-8,500.

Globally investors may have to reconsider their bets as the latest opinion poll ahead of US presidential elections (on November 8) indicated that the gap between Democratic party candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican party's Donald Trump has been narrowing.

Most Asian markets like Hong Kong's Hang Seng, Japan's Nikkei etc fell more than 1 percent on negative lead from Wall Street. Among European markets, France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were down 0.3-0.7 percent at the time of writing this article.

Back home, the broader markets hit hardest, falling 1.84 percent on weak breadth. About two shares declined for every share rising on the BSE.

All sectoral indices ended in red. Nifty PSU Bank lost 3.5 percent as SBI, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank, IDBI Bank, PNB, Canara Bank and OBC were down 3-6 percent.

Tata Motors plunged 3 percent. UK-based luxury car maker JLR's October sales grew by 6.9 percent year-on-year, aided by Jaguar but the growth was limited due to lower Land Rover sales.

Mahindra & Mahindra bucked the trend, rising 3.5 percent after stellar growth in tractor sales. Farm equipment segment registered a whopping 61 percent rise in sales, though auto segment grew by only 1.2 percent.

ONGC was the biggest loser, down 4 percent followed by Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, TCS, BHEL, ITC and ICICI Bank with 1-3 percent loss while HUL and NTPC gained 0.74 percent each.