Indices swing sharply

As the markets have picked up momentum, the benchmark indices have shown heightened intra-day activity, in terms of movements between the day's high and the day's low. Market participants report that these swings have increased in the last three months.

Business Standard looked at a period from April 2, 2003 to January 8, 2004, a total of 195 trading days, broken into 15-day slabs.

The average swing seen in the Sensex in the first 15-day period was 49 points which was more or less the average for the next 120 trading sessions.

In this period the Sensex moved up from 3,116.99 on April 2 to 4,193.83 on September 15, a rise of almost 1,075 points.

But the Sensex ran into turbulent weather in the next 75 trading sessions with intra-day swings almost doubling at 93 points. The Sensex vaulted almost 1,900 points in this period.

In fact, a closer look at the Sensex movements from the 3000 levels has a very interesting story to tell. From 3116.99 points on April 2, the Sensex took all of 58 days to cross the 3500 mark, closing at 3,517.27 on June 25. The average intra-day swing in this period was 41 points.

The journey from here was much faster with the next 500 points coming in just 37 days, but the intra-day swing was wider at 60 points.

The next 1,000 points were added in just 54 trading sessions with the swing shooting up to an average 93 points. The Sensex was at 5063.03 on November 3.

From these levels, the Sensex has zoomed up to the current levels in only 46 days with the intra-day swings at 90 points.