Over 800 smallcaps end the week in red. 116 stocks fall in double-digits up to 43%

BSE Smallcap’s 2% weekly slide had 821 culprits to blame for as they fell up to 43% in the truncated week that ended on Thursday. In this, 116 counters plunged in double-digits as the overall sentiments remained subdued on US recession fears and tariff wars, unleashed by President Donald Trump.

The top 10 laggards in the week gone by include BMW Industries, Triveni Turbine, Veranda Learning Solutions, Jai Corp, Orchid Pharma, Coffee Day Enterprises, Max Estates, EKI Energy Services, Gensol Engineering and K&R Rail Engineering which fell between 16% and 43%.

Others with double-digit decline include Sapphire Foods India, Aditya Birla Real Estate, Balu Forge Industries, Swan Energy, Birlasoft, Hindustan Construction Company, Texmaco Rail & Engineering, Vakrangee and Senco Gold.Smallcap PSU stocks like Housing & Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), Bharat Dynamics, Cochin Shipyard, NBCC (India), BEML, Railtel Corporation Of India, The Jammu & Kashmir Bank, Shipping Corporation Of India (SCI), RITES and Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers fell between 0.82% and 5.80%.

Among the private names which are widely tracked, Tata Chemicals(-2.31), Sobha Motherson Sumi Wiring India, Fortis Healthcare, Natco Pharma, Honasa Consumer (mamaearth) and PVR Inox fell in the range of 2.31% and 6.59%.

Also Read: BSE500 slumps 1.3% week-on-week led by IndusInd Bank crash. IT worst sectoral performer

Smallcaps have been under immense pressure for the past six months and are now dangling in the bear territory. The BSE Smallcap index has fallen by over 23% in this period. In contrast, the BSE Sensex has fallen 11%.Expert Sunil Koul, Goldman Sachs sees further risk in the mid and smallcap segment, especially if one looks at from the positioning standpoint. “As we all know, those are the pockets wherein we had domestic institutions and retail positioning got into very extreme or elevated levels over the last few years and there we have not seen any major signs of moderation yet,” he said.

“There is still quite a bit of retail/domestic institutional positioning in mid and smallcaps and so there could be more risk there. And so in terms of the preference within caps, we still have a preference of largecaps versus kind of mid and smallcaps in our allocation,” he added.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)