Indian share markets witnessed selling pressure throughout the day and ended deep in the red.
Benchmark indices extended losses to the fourth straight day, tracking a massive sell-off on Wall Street amid concerns over the Covid-19 spreading beyond China.
Besides weak cues from global markets, heavy foreign fund outflows too weighed on market sentiment.
Barring telecom stocks, all sectoral indices ended on a negative note with stocks in the realty sector, automobile sector and capital goods sector witnessing most of the selling pressure.
The BSE Sensex stood lower by 392 points, while the NSE Nifty closed down by 119 points.
The BSE Mid Cap index ended the day down by 1.3%, while the BSE Small Cap index ended down by 0.8%.
Asian stock markets ended on a negative note as concerns around the ongoing coronavirus outbreak continued to weigh on investor sentiment.
As of the most recent closing prices, the Hang Seng was down 0.7% while the Nikkei was down 0.8%.
The rupee was trading at 71.62 against the US$.
In news from the pharma sector, Cipla share price was in focus today after the US health regulator issued a warning letter to the pharma company for its Goa manufacturing unit.
Cipla said that the company has received a warning letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for its formulations plant at Goa where the inspection was conducted during 16-27 September 2019.
The warning letter reportedly said that the pharma company may continue to sell existing drugs from the Goa facility, but newer approvals will be held by the regulator if corrective measures are not taken.
The company said it remained committed to maintaining the highest standards of compliance and will work closely with the agency to comprehensively address all the observations.
Last month, the drugmaker had informed exchanges that the USFDA had classified the inspection conducted at its Goa manufacturing facility as Official Action Indicated (OAI). The company had then said that it did not believe that it would have any material impact on the US business at this stage.
We will keep you updated on how this development pans out. Stay tuned.
Moving on to news from the commodity space, market participants were closely tracking gold prices today. This came as the gold rate rose to head back towards a more-than seven-year high hit earlier this week, as a warning from the United States over the domestic spread of the coronavirus outbreak rattled global markets, supporting the yellow metal's safe-haven demand.
Note that 2019 proved pretty good for gold, as gold surged amid fears of a possible slowdown in global growth and uncertainty surrounding geopolitical crisis in West Asia and Britain's divorce from the European Union.
The same uptrend is also seen in 2020 so far.
Gold prices are seen rising as the rapid spread of coronavirus cases outside of China and its potential negative impact on the global economy are prompting investors to take refuge in safe haven assets like gold.
An increase in the number of new coronavirus cases outside China over the past few days have bolstered the safe haven appeal of gold. South Korea, Italy, and Iran have logged sharp increases in infections and deaths, while several countries in the Middle East reported their first cases of coronavirus.
The international spot gold prices have rallied to seven-year highs while India's domestic gold prices rallied to all-time highs.
Speaking of gold, how lucrative has gold been as a long-term investment in India?
The chart below shows the annual returns on gold over the last 15 years...
Gold Has Been a Shining Long-Term Investment
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