The Sensex had a nervous breakdown, the stock market lost control of its sensex, sorry senses, and business TV channels needed immediate medical attention, to say nothing of their madcap, sorry midcap (whatever) anchors who until the afternoon of Monday February 10, 2008 had expended considerable energy recommending, but not precisely recommending but perhaps recommending, nevertheless, Reliance Power to TV customers, only to see a currency outage (forgive the pun).

The charm of business TV anchors is that they often give ‘stock’ advice to investors seeking to invest or sell, in a jargon which says ‘uh’, knowing they have recommended nothing they can be held accountable for. For example, at least one influential business TV anchor, in his newspaper column last Monday morning, “guess”d that Reliance Power shares would “possibly settle around Rs 500-550 in the near term”. Guess? Possibly? Near term? We’ve heard of hedge funds (sorta) but this is called hedging your bets so carefully, the investor was wiser before consulting him. However, viewers tend to trust such equivocal advice, take it at face value and act upon it. Oh, by the way, Reliance Power closed at Rs 372.50. Guess in the nearest term, you possibly suffered considerable losses.

Yesterday, after Reliance Power offered bonus shares to soothe the market’s and investors’ hurt feelings, the anchors were more circumspect, weighing their words as if choosing between a death or life sentence — well, there will be short term losses, long terms gains... But the damage had already been done.

... contd.