Mumbai, Mar 24: Markets in the week gone by were volatile and choppy. Traders and investors were shaken looking at the intraday volatility, where markets opened positive and then turned negative and vice versa. At the end of the week, they gained on four of the five trading sessions and lost on one.
The net change saw BSESENSEX gain 188.51 points or 0.26 per cent to close at 72,831.94 points while NIFTY gained 73.40 points or 0.33 per cent to close at 22,096.75 points.
The broader markets saw BSE100, BSE200 and BSE500 gain 0.57 per cent, 0.73 per cent and .84 per cent respectively. BSDEMIDCAP gained 1.44 per cent while BSESMALLCAP was up 1.81 per cent.
A sample of the volatility is given below where BSESENSEX gained 105 points on Monday, 89 points on Wednesday, 540 points on Thursday and 190 points on Friday. It lost 736 points on Tuesday. This brings us to total gains on five days of 924 points and a loss of 736 points. Against this, the daily swing which is the difference between the intraday high and low was much higher.
On Monday, it was 671 points, Tuesday was 557 points, Wednesday it was 728 points, Thursday it was 466 points and on Friday it was 943 points. Total intra-week volatility was at 3.365 points against a net change of a mere 188 points. This clearly shows that markets seem to have lost the trend and are drifting in either direction, which is indicative of even sharper moves in the coming time.
The Indian Rupee lost 54 paisa or 0.65 per cent to close at Rs 83.42 to the US Dollar. Dow Jones gained on four of the five sessions and lost on one on Friday. At the end of the week, Dow Jones gained 761.13 points or 1.97 per cent to close at 39,475.90 points. The US FED in its meeting kept interest rates unchanged in a band of 5.25 per cent to 5.50 per cent. This was the fifth straight time that interest rates have been kept unchanged.
Post the meeting, indications remain strong that there will be three rate cuts later in the year, an expected event which is not allowing markets to fall in the US. On Thursday and Friday, some of the IT giants issued profit warnings which caused the Dow to dip sharply on the back of the IT stocks.
In India too we had the repercussions and the IT sector was under tremendous pressure. It was the biggest weekly loser and was down 5.54 per cent. Stocks like Infosys were down 7.71 per cent and TCS lost 7.22 per cent.