The market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India on Thursday modified the guidelines governing the recently-introduced mechanism for sale by promoters through the stock exchange mechanism. According to the modification, the indicative price provided by the stock exchanges should reflect volume-weighted average price of all the bids that have exhausted the quantity offered. Earlier, it was mandated to provide indicative price only during the last half an hour of the duration of the offer for sale.
Pessimism is taking a toll on the securities industry, where more than 200,000 jobs were lost last year, even as U.S. unemployment declines as the economy accelerates. Sentiment is the worst since the early 1980s, when 17 years of equity market stagnation gave way to the biggest rally in history.
“Investors are scared to death,” Philip Orlando, the New York-based chief equity strategist at Federated Investors Inc., which oversees about $370 billion, said in a telephone interview on Feb. 3. “The fears are justified, but from a valuation standpoint the market has overshot, as it typically does. We’ve been pounding the table to put money into equities.”
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 2.2 percent last week to 1,344.90 after U.S. unemployment fell to the lowest level since February 2009 and manufacturing grew at the fastest rate in seven months. The S&P 500 retreated 0.2 percent to 1,342.13 at 11:46 a.m. in New York on Thursday.
Companies whose shares dropped at least 20 percent last year helped lead the gain, with Whirlpool Corp. climbing 26 percent, Genworth Financial Inc. (GNW) rallying 17 percent and Cummins Inc. (CMI) increasing 13 percent.