If stock market be considered a game of snakes and ladders, there has been almost one snake for every ladder in the current fiscal, which is about to end after six days of trading. This means that an investor who entered the stock market at the beginning of the fiscal has suffered losses on one stock out of every two purchased.According to an analysis of the market value of close to 2,360 companies that were listed on the bourses at the beginning of the current fiscal and whose shares are still being actively traded, the market value has taken a hit or remain almost unchanged for nearly half of them.While close to 1,100 companies have seen their market capitalisations actually dropping from the levels at the beginning of the current fiscal, the market capitalisation of more than 150 companies are almost unchanged from those levels.The analysis does not include companies that were listed on the bourses during the fiscal through IPOs, de-merger or as part of other corporate decisions. There were close to 2,500 stocks being traded actively at the beginning of the current fiscal, while the number has moved above 2,700 at present.The list of prominent losers in the course of the current fiscal includes blue chips like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, Tata Motors, Hindustan Zinc, HCL Technologies, M&M, Cipla, Dr Reddy's Labs and Indian Hotels.Together, 1,101 companies have lost close to Rs 2,62,000 crore since the beginning of this fiscal. The total gains registered by the remaining companies stand at about Rs 14,00,000 crore mainly due to huge gains recorded by blue chips like Reliance Industries, ONGC, NTPC, Bharti Airtel and SBI.
