Fear index at its highest in 3 years

Wed, 5 May Closing

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The markets staged a good comeback during the closing hours of trade. However, the momentum was not good enough to take them into the positive territory, thus resulting into a closing just below the breakeven mark. The Sensex ended lower by around 50 points today (-0.3%) while the NSE Nifty lost around 25 points (-0.5%). BSE Midcap and Small cap witnessed contrasting trends, with the former ending marginally in the green while the latter closed slightly lower. On the Sensex, gainers and losers were rather evenly split today.

Most Asian markets closed in the red today whereas Europe is also trading below the breakeven currently. The rupee was trading Rs 44.9 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Financial aid for Greece is a closed chapter now. The troubled Euro nation has been rescued and nine times out of ten, this should have cheered investors. However, that was not to be. The fact remains that Greece may not be alone. Investors are worried that Spain and Portugal could be two of the next countries that could need financial assistance and hence, they seem to be unwilling to make bullish bets just yet. An indication of how fear has gripped market participants anew could also be gauged from Wall Street’s key index of volatility, which has hit its highest level in more than two months and which is up more than 53% since early April, when the index was trading at its lowest level in nearly three years.

While it may be going through a tough time currently, domestic wind power equipment maker Suzlon is likely to see some better days ahead, atleast in the domestic markets if not globally. As per a leading daily, wind energy sector in India is all set to add over 5,000 MW generation capacity per annum by 2015. It should be noted that the country today has around 11,000 MW of installed wind energy capacity with utilization in the range of 15% to 20%. On the other hand, the total potential is in the region of 48,000 MW and with new technology, this could go up to as much as 1.2 lakh MW. Thus, even if a small part of this gap is breached, it would be huge benefit for wind power equipment makers like Suzlon. The stock closed flat today.

After wind power, there seems to be some good news in store for the Indian textile sector as well. As per a daily, the Indian textile sector is on its recovery path and exports are likely to increase by 10% in the current financial year. The textile sector was one of the hardest hit during the US financial crisis with exports contracting by 4.3% during the first nine months of FY10 and industry players facing a lot of hardships. However, with demand reviving, things should certainly improve for the better. Shareholders though may find very few reasons to get enthused as the sector is not really known for long term shareholder value creation. Textile stocks closed mixed today with Page Industries and Arvind Ltd finding themselves on the positive side of things.