India shows poor recovery

While the Indian market has been one of the biggest losers in this month's correction, it is also one of the laggards in the global recovery seen during the second half of last week.

Though the Sensex and the Nifty figured among the top eight losers in the 33 most prominent stock-market indices in the world, they were among the bottom one-third when it came to recovery.

The lack of recovery in the Indian market was in line with global trends, which saw American and European markets recover much more than their Asian peers after the bloodbath.

Egypt, Russia and Turkey led the losers on the basis of their levels at the beginning of this month. The Capital Market Authority Index of Egypt saw the greatest decline of 18.51 per cent, while Moscow Times — one of the star performers over the last year - followed with 17.47 per cent loss and Turkey's ISE Index with 16.16 per cent loss.

The Sensex and the Nifty, with losses of 11.43 and 11.26 per cent respectively, followed at number seven and eight, though still better than the South American indices which slipped by 12 to 15 per cent.

The rest of the world bounced back during the last three days and though the Indian markets showed signs of improved sentiment, they remained laggards compared with other markets, with only a modest recovery.

The biggest post-correction gainer was Brazil where the Bovespa Index bounced back by 6.64 per cent against a loss of 12 per cent during the correction.

Russia, the second highest loser during the correction, was also the second best performer during the late-week recovery. The Moscow Times put on 4.68 per cent, far less than the 17.47 per cent decline it had seen during the month. Except for India, all the big losers during the correction like Egypt, Argentina and Austria figured among the top performers of the bounce-back.

India's lack of recovery was in line with the other Asian markets where, with the exception of Japan, there has been no bounce-back, but for a slowdown or pause in the downslide.

Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia were among the countries which saw negative movement even after the mid-week recovery began, while India saw a mix, with the Sensex sliding and the Nifty gaining.

Even in Asia, the recovery was led by the more developed markets like Singapore, which recovered 0.64 per cent, and Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong, the last of which moved up by 0.19 per cent over the last three days.