Participatory Notes Issue in January 2008

Participatory notes issue in January 2008On October 16, 2007, SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India) proposed curbs on participatory notes which accounted for roughly 50% of FII investment in 2007. SEBI was not happy with P-notes because it was not possible to know who owned the underlying securities, and hedge funds acting through P-notes might therefore cause volatility in the Indian markets.

However the proposals of SEBI were not clear and this led to a knee-jerk crash when the markets opened on the following day (October 17, 2007). Within a minute of opening trade, the Sensex crashed by 1744 points or about 9% of its value - the biggest intra-day fall in Indian stock markets in absolute terms till then. This led to automatic suspension of trade for 1 hour. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram issued clarifications, in the meantime, that the government was not against FIIs and was not immediately banning PNs. After the market opened at 10:55 AM, the index staged a comeback and ended the day at 18715.82, down 336.04 from the last day's close.

This was, however not the end of the volatility. The next day (October 18, 2007), the Sensex tumbled by 717.43 points — 3.83 per cent — to 17998.39. The slide continued the next day when the Sensex fell 438.41 points to settle at 17559.98 at the end of the week, after touching the lowest level of that week at 17226.18 during the day.

After detailed clarifications from the SEBI chief M. Damodaran regarding the new rules, the market made a 879-point gain on October 23, thus signalling the end of the PN crisis.In anuary 2008In the third week of January 2008, the Sensex experienced huge falls along with other markets around the world. On 21 January 2008, the Sensex saw its highest ever loss of 1,408 points at the end of the session. The Sensex recovered to close at 17,605.40 after it tumbled to the day's low of 16,963.96, on high volatility as investors panicked following weak global cues amid fears of a recession in the US.

The next day, the BSE Sensex index went into a free fall. The index hit the lower circuit breaker in barely a minute after the markets opened at 10 AM. Trading was suspended for an hour. On reopening at 10.55 AM IST, the market saw its biggest intra-day fall when it hit a low of 15,332, down 2,273 points. However, after reassurance from the Finance Minister of India, the market bounced back to close at 16,730 with a loss of 875 points.

Over the course of two days, the BSE Sensex in India dropped from 19,013 on Monday morning to 16,730 by Tuesday evening or a two day fall of 13.9%.

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