The slide has been breathtaking. On 4 December 2008, the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) cheerleaders were singing paeans to the ‘major step forward’ in improving transparency by publishing its board agenda and minutes on its website; and for the code of conduct it had formulated to avoid conflict of interest of its board members. The decision had been hailed as a ‘global...

Retail investors are an endangered species. This will undermine the government’s disinvestment plans

The disinvestment of public sector undertakings (PSUs) has usually lurched from one controversial strategy to another. It started in 1991 with the strange decision to bunch PSUs into packets and auction them. The auction was compromised; banks fronted for brokers in the market madness...

If we don’t get a snap-back rally soon, things can be pretty ugly, especially below 15,300

In our previous issue, I had suggested that the short-term trend was down. At the time of writing that piece, the Sensex was at 16,860. Over the next two weeks of trading, the market has gone on to make fresh lows. It had crashed below 16,000 on the day of the credit policy (actual low point of...