Strong Start To The Week; Sensex Scales 29,000 Mark

Stock markets in India continued to trade strong in the afternoon session and finished well above the dotted line. At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 216 points, while the NSE Nifty finished up by 66 points.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Mid Cap and the S&P BSE Small Cap finished up by 0.7% and 0.6% respectively.

BSE Small Cap Index recently hit a 9 year high. One look at this data might lead one to believe that Small caps are the area to look at while searching for multi baggers.

BSE Small Cap Index 2007-17

But when one takes a holistic view of the Smallcap index over a period of 10 years, the point to point returns have been negligible. To put it plainly, if someone had invested Rs. 100 in the small cap Index on Dec-07 and kept it till Mar 2017, he would have made absolutely no gain whatsoever.

Gains were largely seen in oil & gas stocks, power stocks & autostocks.

Bharti Airtel share price finished up by 1.8% in today’s trade after the company entered into an agreement with Millicom International Cellular S.A. (Millicom) for Tigo Ghana and Airtel Ghana to combine their operations in Ghana. As per the agreement, Airtel and Millicom would have equal ownership and governance rights in the combined entity.

The combined business would cover more than 80% of Ghana’s population with high speed data, providing the widest 3G coverage across the country, and would have revenues close to US$300 million, making it one of the largest communications companies in Ghana.

Information technology (IT) stocks came under pressure and finished in red as the United States announced that from April 3 it would temporarily suspend the ‘premium processing’ of H-1B visas that allowed some companies to jump the queue as part of its efforts to clear the backlog.

Asian stock markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.48% and the Hang Seng rose 0.18%. The Nikkei 225 lost 0.46%.European markets are lower today with shares in Germany off the most. The DAX is down 0.57% while London’s FTSE 100 is off 0.37% and France’s CAC 40 is lower by 0.32%.