200 crore every minute

It is a left handed complement to vibrancy in the stock market - investors are losing about Rs 200 crore in every minute of trade since last Thursday, but there is no alarm.

Investors' wealth, measured in terms of market capitalisation of all the listed companies in the country, has plummeted by over Rs 3,25,600 crore in the past five straight sessions, taking it to Rs 61,58,532 core at the end of today's trading.

Taking into account five hours and 35 minutes of trading in a session, the market has seen a total 1,675 minutes of trading since November 15. The total loss of Rs 3,25,600 crore since that day leads to an average loss of about Rs 194 crore every minute or more than Rs three crore every second.

Still, any sign of panic was not visible on Dalal Street and a number of marketmen defined the fall as "a buying opportunity" or "healthy correction".

"Buying opportunity has already set in the front-line stocks and a number of stocks appear to be attractive at current levels," Premium Investments CEO S P Tulsian told media.

"There is no alarm... This is a healthy correction and it was much required after an uptrend for the past two and half months to provide an entry point," Tulsian noted.

"The fall is mostly due to weakness in the global markets... So far only China and India were holding the ground in a global downtrend, but now even these markets are seeing some impact," brokerage firm SMC Global Vice President Rajesh Jain said.

During the past five trading sessions, the market breadth has been positive on four days and it was only today that number of stocks advancing (22 per cent) was lower than those declining (76 per cent).