Share markets in India witnessed a sharp fall in the final minutes of trade. At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex closed lower by 266 points. While, the NSE Nifty finished lower by 83 points. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Midcap Index and the S&P BSE Small Cap Index ended down by 1.5% & 1% respectively.

Among BSE sectoral indices, IT index weighed down by Infosys, fell by 2%, followed by PSU stocks 1.8%, and healthcare stocks 1.6%. Infosys, BHEL, and Bank of Baroda were the top losers, while Axis Bank, M&M and Tech Mahindra were the top gainers on BSE.

Overseas, Asian equity markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.56% and the Hang Seng rose 0.40%. The Nikkei 225 lost 0.40%. European markets are lower today with shares in France off the most. The CAC 40 is down 0.66% while Germany's DAX is off 0.36% and London's FTSE 100 is lower by 0.11%.

The rupee was trading at Rs 64.03 against the US$ in the afternoon session. Oil prices were trading at US$ 48.67 at the time of writing.

Infosys share price dipped to its three-year low of Rs 873.5, extending its previous day's fall of nearly 10% on National Stock Exchange (NSE) after the IT major's buyback plan failed to cheer the markets.

The company on Saturday announced that it would buy back shares worth up to Rs 130 billion, or 4.92%, from investors at Rs 1,150 per share.

Tanushree Banerjee, Co-head of Research has written everything you need to know about the share buybacks in the IT sector and has offered insights on how the firms deal with the huge cash piles (Subscription Required). Here's a snippet of what she wrote:

• "So, what should long-term investors do? There's no doubt that tendering a part of your shares in a buyback could be a tempting proposition, especially if the buyback price is higher than the market price.
  
  However, it's important to understand that buybacks reduce the outstanding number of shares. Thus, the shareholders who don't tender their shares will end up with a bigger piece of the pie."

Pharma stocks closed the day on a mixed note with Ajanta Pharma and Panacea Biotech leading the losses. The domestic pharmaceuticals sector may be set for a shake-up on the reports that Ahmedabad headquartered Cadila Healthcare and Torrent Pharmaceuticals are re-evaluating a potential merger between both the companies.

If the deal goes through, there would be significant benefits in terms of achieving the desired size and scale and synergies in terms of complementary overseas markets like Russia and Latin America.

Moreover, the resultant merged entity of Cadila Healthcare and Torrent Pharma would command a market cap of nearly Rs 700 billion and move into a stronger number two position and inch closer to Sun Pharma.

Cadila Healthcare is already at the number two position with a market capitalisation of Rs 490.9 billion followed by Cipla, Lupin & Aurobindo Pharma.

Defensive pharma, the darling of the stock markets in 2015, is down in the dumps. Since the start of 2017, the BSE Pharma Index has fallen about 20%. The combined market capitalisation of the top pharma stocks is now less than that of Reliance Industries.

Combined Market Cap of Top Pharma Lesser than that of Reliance Industries

Over the last three years, the USFDA raised numerous regulatory concerns, resulting in import bans and suspension of new drug approvals from facilities of Indian pharma companies. This has hurt the sector's revenues and earnings and is behind much of the pessimism surrounding the sector.

But, is there light at the end of the tunnel? As per Girish Shetty, our research analyst, it doesn't make sense to paint all pharma stocks with the same brush. The leaders of the industry will certainly survive this phase. And just like IT, there are interesting, niche pharma stocks that are worth your attention.

So, what is key to identifying potential multibagger stocks? How does one pick them at the right time and ride them to their full potential? How many multibaggers do you really need to achieve the big riches that you desire?

Most importantly, are there any stocks right now that could turn out to be multibaggers? Click here to know everything that you need to know right now about multibagger stocks...

Moving on to the news from the economy. On the back of increasing domestic coal production, India's dependence on the imported coal has fallen by 6.4% to 191.95 million tonnes (MT) in the financial year 2016-17 (FY17) as compared to 203.95 MT in the previous financial year.

Reportedly, higher production by Coal India (CIL) has helped the country to move towards regime of coal surplus situation.

Besides, thermal and steam coal imports also witnessed reduction by falling 17.4% to 29.82 MT at the top 12 major ports, during April-July period of this fiscal and handling of coking coal also dipped 4.5% to 16.51 MT as against 17.27 MT in the corresponding period in the previous financial year.

On the other hand, the country's total coal production stood at 659.27 MT as against the demand of 884.87 MT.

One must note that, India is the third-largest producer of coal after China and the US but is still facing fuel demand supply problem. In an effort to meet the country's growing fuel demand, the government has announced plans to boost CIL's annual production to the level of 1 billion tonnes by 2019.