Brokers’ bandh hits volumes
Mumbai—The nationwide stock brokers’ bandh was quite successful on Monday.

Almost the entire broking fraternity refrained from trading leading to a sharp drop in volumes. The combined turnover on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange dropped to Rs 69 crore, as against daily averages of Rs 2,500 to Rs 2,800 crore on normal days. This was perhaps the lowest level in the past one decade. The BSE saw a near complete bandh as it recorded a mere Rs 8 crore turnover, while the turnover on the NSE was Rs 61 crore. The benchmark BSE sensitive index shed another 10 points to close at 3,331.
The bandh was organised to protest against the introduction of compulsory rolling settlements without any adequate infrastructure like margin trading or electronic funds transfer facilities.
However, some foreign and domestic institutional brokerage firms did not opt to boycott trading and entered into some transactions in stocks like State Bank of India, Reliance Industries, Infosys and Satyam Computer.
Most of the trades were automated lending borrowing mechanism trades. After moving in a range of 30 points, the BSE Sensitive Index (Sensex) ended with a minor loss of 9.77 points at 3,330.98.

Said a spokesman for the Association of NSE Members of India said, "We want the introduction of some margin products and deferral products and the limit on bank funding for stock brokers to be raised. The association, which has around 750 members out of the nearly 1,000 brokers registered with the NSE, and the 500-member BSE Brokers Forum are heading the protest.
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Bond prices crash
New Delhi--Now mutual funds have yet another problem to contend with.
With the Industrial Development Bank of India being downgraded by Crisil, fresh problems for bond funds have started, which are reeling under the impact of a sharp fall in bond prices.
The cumulative investment of funds in IDBI bonds as on June 30 is estimated at Rs 1,316.5 crore.
Industry experts said the downgrade could especially jolt short- term debt or cash funds if it drained out liquidity from IDBI papers. These funds attract investments for short-duration and hence, owned a portfolio of very liquid bonds. The downgrade can have a short term impact on their net asset values.
June portfolios of these funds revealed that most bond and cash funds held sizeable investments in IDBI’s debt securities. Take the following examples. Dundee Bond PSU Fund has an exposure of 18.3 per cent in IDBI. Zurich India Liquidity Saving has 14.59 per cent exposure, Reliance Liquid Treasury Plan, 14.54 per cent, Birla Cash Plus, 12.94 per cent, Zurich India Liquidity Investment, 12.72 per cent, Alliance Cash Manager, 12.47 per cent, Franklin India Balanced. 12.32 percent, PNB Debt, 11.89 per cent, Sundaram Money, 11.62 per cent and Templeton MIP has an exposure of 11.42 per cent in the institution.
Some fund managers have recently been offloading their positions in IDBI paper. According to senior fund manager in Dundee Mutual Fund, the Fund has reduced its exposure to Rs 6 crore in IDBI. Out of the Rs 6-crore exposure, Rs 1 crore will mature next month and the remaining five crore will mature in July 2002. He said the fund was not buying ICICI and IDBI bonds as there was no liquidity in the market.
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US stocks slide
New York—The US stockmarket fell sharply on Monday.
In midday trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 118.60 at 10,458.05. The broader market was also lower with the Nasdaq falling 26.48 to 2,002.89 and the Standard & Poor's 500 index slipping 13.96 to 1,196.89.
So far more than 800 companies have warned of shrinking profits and many others have said that business is so uncertain they can't make accurate projections.
On Monday, the market's losses were spread across a wide array of sectors. Among Monday's losers were companies like printer maker Lexmark International, which slid $7.59, or nearly 13 per cent, to $51.06, despite beating earnings expectations.
Goodyear Tyre, slipped 96 cents to $30.68.
Dow industrial 3M, which beat expectations but reported lower revenue by 4.5 per cent, was down $1.01 at $111.99. There were some gainers though, including Cisco, which rose 42 cents to $18.41 after being upgraded to "buy" from "hold" by UBS Warburg.
Toy maker Hasbro advanced 80 cents to $15.80 after reporting a second-quarter loss of 11 cents a share, two cents less than Wall Street was expecting.
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