Equities succumbed to massive unwinding after profit warning and downgrade fears rattled investors settlement with the benchmark Nifty tumbling by 74 points to close below the 8,600 milestone on the NSE here.
Healthcare stocks took a hammering following a profit warning from drug major Sun Pharma that measures undertaken to integrate Ranbaxy have a bearing on its revenues and profits in the current financial year.
Its share tumbled by a whopping 15.06 per cent to close at Rs 805.25.
After a better start, market remained marginally higher amid consolidation as investors reacted to a slew of corporate earnings news after the country's second-largest IT company Infosys reported nearly 5 per cent y-o-y increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 3,030 crore for the June quarter which met street expectations on revenue and profit front.
However, bourses witnessed a sudden bout of volatility towards the fag-end trade as investors resorted to heavy profit-taking amid caution ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament.
The broader 50-share NSE Nifty opened higher at 8,601.50 and fluctuated between a high of 8,646.75 and low of 8,517.90 before ending at 8,529.45, a sharp fall of 74 points, or 0.86 per cent.
Meanwhile, other Asian markets ended firmly higher taking a strong lead from US stocks with the Nasdaq Composite surging to another record high.
Among the CNX-sectoral, Healthcare indices collapsed nearly 7 per cent followed by Realty 2.32 per cent, FMCG 1.80 per cent, Energy 1.75 per cent, Bank Nifty 1.63 per cent, PSU Bank 1.48 per cent and Metal 1.12 per cent.
The Mid-cap and Small-cap too saw some worst selling and ended with 1.86 and 1.85 per cent drop, respectively.
However, better earnings from the tech Major Infosys helped the sectoral IT indices to rally by 3.45 per cent.
The top laggards on Nifty were Sun Pharma, ITC, HDFC Bank, Reliance, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Lupin, ONGC, L&T, Asian Paints, HUL, Kotak Bank, Ultracemco, Cipla, SBI, Bosch, TCS, Dr Reddys, Vedanta, M&M, Ambuja Cements, IDEA and Grasim.
Notable gainers included Infosys, Bharti Artel, ZEE, HCL-Tech, Wipro, Tech-M, Heromoto, Bajaj Auto and Coal India.
Turnover in the cash segment jumped to Rs 19,366.4 crore from Rs 13,822.82 crore yesterday.
A total of 8,827.93 lakh shares changed hands in 77,45,855 trades and the total market capitalisation of Nifty stood at Rs 1,00,96,558 crore.
