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The Indian stock market has experienced a series of significant highs and lows over the decades. Let’s take a look at India's biggest stock market crashes and their impact.
The infamous Harshad Mehta scam led to a 570-point (12.77%) fall in the SENSEX on April 29, 1992. Mehta used nearly ₹1,000 crore taken from banks to manipulate stock prices.
It's considered one of the biggest stock market crashes, causing a loss of ₹4,000 crore worth of investor money. This was when the Indian economy was already suffering.
Ketan Parekh manipulated stock prices of tech companies during the dot-com boom using illegal funding from banks like Madhavpura Mercantile Co-op Bank.
The dot-com bubble burst in 2001, triggering a market crash as his speculative bets crumbled. The SENSEX fell by 176 points (4.23%) on March 2, 2001.
The infamous Lehman Brothers collapse in the US sent shockwaves across the globe, causing a major liquidity crunch in the Indian market as well.
Between January 2008 and March 2009, SENSEX dropped by 61.5% (21,206 to 8,160), with SENSEX dropping by 1,408 pts (7.4%) in a single day on January 21, 2008.
On August 24, 2015, the SENSEX dropped by 5.94% (1,624 points) as China devalued its currency, the yuan, causing panic across global markets.
Indian markets were also impacted, with Brexit fears and oil oversupply fueling the negative sentiment, causing ₹7 lakh crore investor wealth to be wiped out in a single day.
PM Modi’s overnight ban on ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes on November 9, 2016, resulted in a SENSEX fall of 1,689 points (6.12%). The Indian market suffered a loss of ₹3-4 lakh crore.
The global pandemic triggered one of the biggest and fastest stock market crashes in India in 2020, with the SENSEX falling by over 38% in just 40 days.
On March 23, 2020, India faced the worst single-day fall, when the SENSEX fell by 3,935 points and NIFTY dropped 1,135 points, leading to an overall loss of ₹13.95 lakh crore in a week.
On January 24, 2023, Hindenburg Research accused the Adani Group of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, leading to a massive selloff in Adani stocks.
Indian markets faced a huge downturn; the SENSEX dropped over 2,000 points in the following days, resulting in huge losses.
After the ruling BJP failed to cross the majority mark on its own in the 2024 general elections, the stock market tumbled by nearly 6%, erasing crores in value.
When the US President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on India in April, SENSEX dropped by 3,291.95 points (4.37%), and NIFTY fell by 1,058.30 points (4.62%).
Presently, the market is volatile amid uncertainty over trade deal with US. On August 1, SENSEX ended 0.7% down at 80,599.91, and NIFTY was down 0.82% at 24,565.35.
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