Nothing lasts forever..

No.. I'm not talking about the Sidney Sheldon novel by the same name.. this is about the Indian stock market's so called bull streak.

After my last post, the Sensex took an almost 300 point swing and finally ending with a 192 point drop. Almost 7-8% of the value of my portfolio was wiped-off in the day. It is said that Alan Greenspan made some statement to the effect that interest rates in the US should be going up and the bears that were waiting for some such bad news added fuel to the fire saying that the FII inflows will vanish and some such things.

Today, again the markets were pretty volatile with the sensex losing about 95 pts (roughly 1.5%). It was a 150 point swing during the day. Another 3-4% loss for me today.

I get a feeling that the brokers are the primary beneficiaries in any volatile market. The volumes have at the least tripled. It seems the turnover today was Rs 25,981.47 crore (Rs 259.81 billion). A considerable portion of this money will go in as commission. They should also be making a lot of money in day trades on such swings. And they can have the best pick of the tumbling stocks. In fact, yesterday for the major part, I could not even enter into my ICICI Demat account because of the huge traffic on the site. I'm sure these guys will have privileged access during such times.

Anyway, I had diluted some of my profits before the new year to cover my short-term cash requirements. So, I'm not too bothered.

And you know what.. There is another colleague here who is supposed to be managing a huge equity investment portfolio.. in lakhs (that is huuuge by my standards :) He had a gloomy face and was saying that it’s been bad. Hmm... that is actually consoling! ;)