The 1,499 point, 7.9 per cent fall in the Sensex last week hid the even greater 1,744 point, 9.2 per cent intra-day fall on Volatile Wednesday. The Wednesday fall followed Securities and Exchange Board of India’s proposed restrictions on participatory notes, a vehicle global moneybags not wanting to go through the process of registering themselves as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) use to get an India exposure. The week has seen enough critique, debate and discussion on how good or bad it is for such investors to enter through the “front door”.

But the fall hid within it some interesting numbers. Of the 2,289 companies for which comparative and crunchable data for the past year is available, four out of five companies (1,878 or 82 per cent of the total sample) saw their share prices fall. While a statistically insignificant 15 companies’ share prices stayed put, 393 companies or 17 per cent of the total sample saw their prices rise.

While the headlines were loud and TV anchors gloomy, hiding behind this 1,878 companies was something every long-term investor would be waiting for: an opportunity to invest. For long, correction-seeking analysts and investors alike had been waiting... waiting... waiting for a market that in the very near term rose 1,000 points in four days, to correct itself. Well, at close to 1,500 points, they’ve got more than their share of short-term correction.

Of the lot, the share prices of 397 companies fell by more than 10 per cent. That’s almost every fifth company. Among the stars here are Reliance Energy (Rs 1,333) which fell almost 28 per cent, Bank of India (Rs 256, down 21 per cent), Reliance Capital (Rs 1,498, down 20 per cent), BHEL (Rs 2,051, down 15 per cent), State Bank of India (Rs 1,668, down 15 per cent), Bharti Airtel (Rs 968, down 14 per cent).

... contd.