After market crash, trading halt, volatility, Sensex jumps 5,000 points to recover from day's low, Nifty tops 10,000

On a day when markets witnessed a tussle between the bulls and bears, both the benchmark indices marked their biggest recovery in the history after trading halted for the first time in the past 12 years.

After the trading halted as 50-share NSE Nifty crashed by 10% in just five minutes of the opening of the market, the indices rallied by up to 19% to mark the biggest recovery in the history of Indian equities.

Follow today's stock markets developments here

After opening about 400 points lower, Nifty50 witnessed a heavy sell-off which leading to a crash of 966 points (10.1%) in just five minutes of trade, forcing in circuit breaker of 10% in Dalal Street. As the trading began the markets tanked further.

However, later as the markets started paring its losses, Nifty erased most of its morning losses. After the Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian tried to allay the fears through a presser, the markets started the rally, which led Nifty to make a recovery of 1,604 points (19%) in the intra-day trade. In the later part of the day, Nifty settled to close at 10,023.65, up 434 points (4.52%).

The situation was no different on BSE's 30-share share Sensex. At the time of halting of trade, the BSE was down 9.43%. When it resumed the trade an hour later it further crashed to an 11% loss. However, with index level buying by domestic funds, the Sensex recovered 5,400 points (18%) before settling at 34,103.48, up 1325.34 (4.04%).

In the sectoral indices, Nifty Bank -- which had crashed the most after the collapse of YES Bank -- was the biggest gainer of the day surging 5.73%. Only sectoral index to end in red was Nifty media, down 0.74%.

The day was marked by a high degree of volatility as India VIX, which measures the volatility in the markets surged by 25% during the day.

While the far eastern indices were in deep red, with Nikkei 225 crashing by as much as 6.02%, the European markets, that have opened a couple of hours ago are trading in green.

However, analysts are warning investors to be cautious of this spike. "While the markets are behaving as if the virus has been cured and supply-demand resurrected, we believe that investors should be cautious," said Anubhav Srivastava of Infinity Alternatives.