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Government clarifies probe restricted to penny stocks
New Delhi: The ministry of finance has clarified that ongoing investigations into unusual price movements of shares was limited to a handful of `penny stocks' and was not investigating any broking entity or non-banking financial company (NBFC) for devious market behaviour.

"Individual investigations are on. But the Government has no such list of NBFCs and brokers," the joint secretary, capital markets, U.K. Sinha, said at a briefing to clear misgivings in the minds of market participants.

It is understood that the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) are looking into trading pattern of around 50 penny stocks. He confirmed that the Income-Tax Department had raided the offices of five brokers and that it was based on "specific intelligence reports that were developed over a period of time and were planned much in advance."

Meanwhile, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) too has clarified that searches in Gujarat were part of normal investigation carried out by the I-T Department. "There is no basis for drawing any speculative conclusions from the searches carried out," CBDT has said in a release.

Sinha termed as "partially correct" earlier reports that the finance ministry officials had a meeting with intelligence agencies to discuss capital market issues. "The meeting was in the context of action taken on the last Joint Parliamentary Committee report. We discussed the need to expedite action on some entities that were found guilty," Sinha said.
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Markets: A day of circuit filters
Mumbai: Circuit filters were in action through the day, on Thursday, as every second stock traded on the BSE was locked in lower circuit. The T and Z group stocks were the worst hit.

A total of 1,314 stocks hit the lower circuit out of 2,597 stocks traded.

According to market participants the filters came into action as large number of traders had leveraged position in most of the T group stocks. Since they had to pay money, large scale selling occurred with no buyers. As per market sources most of these traders have not yet been able to square of their position and further fall in share prices may be seen in the next few days.
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