A really long break

I am back after really a long break. I have been waiting to scribble something here but then either it was the constraint of the time or my acute laziness or the intranet in my new company not allowing access to the Blogger .

Lot of developments took place during this sojourn from blogging in my professional life. I moved from Polaris in October 2007 to Accenture. This change in company also forced me to move out of my comfort zone in Hyderabad to Mumbai. As I see myself today, I feel proud of my decision which was not an easy one. But definitely there is something about Mumbai which I feel every other city in our country lacks actually.

On March 08, I shall be completing my probation as well as six long months in the company where I have tried to put my best efforts in doing a lot of things some of which happened, others in the pipeline and some which took off well but are now in a state of dormancy. I continue to work in Calypso but now with much more focus and much more clarity about the application.

My tryst and experiments continue with Interest Rate Derivatives and Credit Derivatives along with certain new areas like subprime mortgages thanks to the recent credit crunch and economy meltdown in US.

The last couple of months have been extremely volatile for the Indian equity markets which were rocking and had proved the decoupling theory earlier. Markets actually came down from a high of 21000 to a low of 15400 in just about 15 trading sessions. A huge fall of close to 2200 points was witnessed during a trading session but it was then lead by a recovery fueled by buying at lower levels. Most of the stock which had jumped by close to 80-90 % have fallen close to 50-60 % in the recent meltdown. Some of the notable names are Ispat (86 to 42), JP Hydro (143 to 75), Neyveli Lignite (256 to 135). New IPOs got a major hammering like the Emaar MGF and Wockhardt Hospitals which could not even get fully leave alone the question of over subscription. In January we saw volatility ranging from a low of 2 % to a high of close to 300 %. The turnover had fell considerably from a high of 1.3 lakh crores to as low as 47000 crores. The markets are still under tremendous pressure and are moving in a rangebound fashion between 16500 till 18000. The message is clear about selling on rallies and buy on decline. But the question remains as to whether the markets have bottomed out and will we be crossing the earlier highs of 21000 on the Sensex and 6500 on Nifty.

There are lot of issues to talk about. I shall take up one by one in the coming articles.