I hope none of our desi-investment promoting friends is being hurt by this. And if they are, hope not too badly.
Is the end of the nightmare in sight yet? cm On a day of crazy swings, Sensex sinks below 10K [ Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:34:10 amTIMES NEWS NETWORK ] RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates MUMBAI: It was a raging storm. The market turned crazily wild, lashing the Sensex with such ferocity that at one point it plumbed down over 1100 points. Trading had to be suspended. Or else the ship might have sunk. When trading resumed, the storm hadnâ¤t cleared, but the market clung to the lifeline of assurances thrown by the finance minister, RBI and SEBI. It clawed back some 700 points, but still closed 450 points down. Veterans tried, and failed to recall this kind of volatility. In just seven sessions the market has sucked out over Rs 6 lakh crore of investors⤠wealth. And there are chances of further losses. Some brave souls claimed the worst was over, but the considered advice of seasoned players was: "Donâ¤t try to catch a falling knife â¤" donâ¤t try to predict the bottom of the market. Not yet." Finance minister P Chidambaram, obviously a worried man, made an unscheduled press statement when trading was suspended to assure investors that nothing was wrong with the fundamentals of the economy. For good measure, he added that FIIs were net buyers on Monday. He went further to add that he would advise retail investors to stay invested. Was he just trying to talk up the market? Or was the advice worth heeding? While the questions were tossed around, the selling pressure seemed to ease up on the bourses and the sensex made a recovery of sorts but not enough to heal the wounds inflicted earlier in the day. After all, the margin money problem was still festering, and banks were apparently shy of giving bail-out loans. As a result, the FM and regulators assured investors that liquidity (money) to meet brokers⤠obligations would not be a problem; the banks will lend. At the same time, government financial institutions were said to have been prodded to buy in order to shore up investor sentiment. Itâ¤s learnt that UTI, LIC and SBI bought heavily, with LIC buying mostly IT stocks. Mutual funds, too, were net buyers of Rs 400 crore. Still, the market sentiment was shaken. Said Shankar Sharma of First Global â¤" once himself in the eye of a meltdown storm: "Itâ¤s a bull with a midlife crisis. A market whose aura of invincibility is gone and now looks just like any other market." After repeatedly failing to read the market behaviour day after day in the last one week, market players were refusing to predict Tuesdayâ¤s market. "We will react to whatever happens. But the mood is one of hopelessness," said the head of a local brokerage. _______________________________________________ assam mailing list [email protected] http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
