Street Signs

SMART EYE

The week started off on a nightmarish note on Monday even as punters were recovering from last Friday's migraines. The Sensex tanked a staggering 565 points, its biggest one-day fall in years.

The huge drop in the Nifty, in initial trades the same day, triggered index-based circuit filters twice during the day and trading was halted for three hours!

A hint of the madness could be gauged from the fact that the Sensex lost nearly 900-points between Friday and Monday. A little help from the Phoenix fund and Life Boy saw some semblance of sanity come into the proceedings in the next few sessions which saw the index claw back.

At the end of the week, the intensity of the migraines were suitably subdued- with the BSE Sensex ending with a cumulative loss of just over 100 points.

The hullabaloo has its roots in the demands for scrapping the Disinvestment Ministry by some Left Front leaders and the possible prevalence of leftist agenda, sparking fears that the government may adopt populist measures and that reforms may be marginalised. This was accentuated by margin calls by banks and brokers after the huge falls.

However, a lot of the positive developments in the markets coincided with the appointment of Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister by the Congress party.

The fact that Singh, who was the finance minister in '91, opened up the Indian economy for foreign competition and dismantled the licence raj was something the Street gave the thumbs up to.

Discordant notes
If PSUs were off key in the preceding week, this week saw some mixed notes. Bharat Forge's disappointing results saw the frangipani dumping the counter.

The Gemini Fund seemed to have second thoughts on the counter after selling around 3 lakhs of the stock in the early part of the week, only to buy back most of them in the latter half. Uncle Sam seemed to have no such doubts and dumped about 2.6 lakh shares.

The result expectations for Bharat Forge were on the higher side, but as soon as the results were out in the preceding week, the frangipani decided to exit the counter.

Incidentally, a few months back, the Pearl Brokerage had been pretty kicked up about the company's prospects and had been tom-tomming about its capacity expansion plans and visibility of strong domestic volume growth coupled with exponential export growth leading to a re-rating.

Funds can be really fair weathered friends really. However, HPCL found some backers this week, with some of the frangipani deciding that there is still a lot of value left in the counter.

In fact, Jordan Flaming was known to have picked up around 11 lakh shares of the scrip.

Plenty of wrong 'uns
Nosy Parkers tell us that a lot of the frangipani were caught on the wrong foot in the whole PSU business and a lot of reorganisation was called for.

They cheer that fact that a lot of hot money was out of the markets and a lot of good money is coming in. Talking about being caught on the wrong foot, the Savvy Fund Manager also had its doubts about Sundaram Fasteners, buying about 7 lakh shares and selling almost all of it on the same day for about the same price.

Just goes on to prove that even the Savvy ones could also be swayed by the crosswinds that blows in a turbulent market. Singapoori Sarkar seemed not too pleased with the Bajaj Auto results and was known to have dumped around 5 lakh shares.

Small Daddy and the Merry Lunch Brokerage were known to have indulged in a bit of cherry picking this week.

Tailpiece
NDTV had made a dashing debut on the bourses, settling at a 42 per cent premium over its IPO price of Rs 70 on Monday. Market makers tell us that a certain relation of Bade Miyan made a killing that day.