Investors suffered a loss of over Rs 2 lakh crore in the stock market on Thursday, with those invested in top blue-chip companies being hit harder than shareholders of smaller companies.
The total investor wealth, measured in terms of value of all listed shares, fell to Rs 60.26 lakh crore in today's trade which saw BSE Sensex falling 704 points-- the worst fall in over 26 months.
This marked a fall of Rs 2.15 lakh crore in investor wealth from Rs 62.41 crore at the end of yesterday's trade.
More than half of the loss was suffered by the top 30 companies, which are part of the benchmark index Sensex.
The total value of 30 Sensex companies fell by Rs 1.11 crore to Rs 27.33 lakh crore.
While markets suffered a plunge across-the-board, the decline of 4.13 per cent in Sensex was higher than that in the mid-cap and small cap indices, as also in the broader market indices for the country's top 100, top 200 and top 500 firms.
The decline in mid and small-cap indices was just over 3 per cent, it was below 4 per cent for other indices, too.
Among the sectoral indices, the worst hit was real estate at 5 per cent. Energy, metal and banking sectors were also hit hard. The losses were smaller at below 3 per cent for stocks in healthcare and FMCG, as also that of PSU companies.
Country's most valued company RIL suffered the biggest loss of about Rs 17,000 crore, followed TCS at over Rs 9,000 crore and Bharti Airtel at about Rs 8,000 crore.
CIL and NTPC also lost over Rs 5,800 crore each of value, while ITC and HDFC Bank lost about Rs 5,000 crore each.
Infosys, ICICI, HDFC, L&T and SBI lost more than Rs 4,000 crore each.
In percentage terms, the biggest losers were JP Associates, DLF, Sterlite Industries, RIL, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, Jindal Steel, TCS, Hindalco and L&T.