A bluechip turns into a punter's delight

On the last day of Satyam’s stint in India’s benchmark indices — the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex and the National Stock Exchange S&P CNX Nifty — its shares turned out to be a punter’s delight.

Traders jumped into the fray to ride the huge wave of volatility, resulting in a huge volume in the counter today, just two days after the shocking revelations of financial irregularities over eight years were made by the company’s former chairman Ramalinga Raju.

In brokerages, employees and investors watched the computer screens anxiously. When the stock touched a low of Rs 6.3 a share in intraday trades on the NSE, a broker rued, “Ek chai kum, ek share zyaada.” The stock touched a high of Rs 32 and a low of Rs 11.5 on the BSE and a total of 8.2 crore shares changed hands. On the NSE, a total of 21.55 crore shares were traded.

Traders in the counter today were mainly stockbrokers trading through their proprietary account, retail traders and high networth individuals. In fact, even on Wednesday when the news first broke, several brokerages picked up shares in proprietary capacity. For instance, OPG Securities picked up 3,413,000 shares at Rs 74.3 a share. While they did sell some shares at a lower price of Rs 21.29, they continued to mop up Satyam shares at lower prices.

CORRECTION:

OPG Securities has not incurred any cash loss while trading in the Satyam Computers scrip, as wrongly implied in this report . The error is regretted.