674760749_ba8c8a59ddMacroeconomic data such as the IIP (Index of Industrial production), CPI (Consumer price index) and GDP (Gross domestic product) have now been decided to be released after market hours (5:30 PM) instead of during market hours at 11 AM (as was done previously) by the government. The explanation put forth by the Indian government is that doing so would prevent a knee-jerk reaction by the market.

Silly explanation?

I personally feel this explanation to be silly. The markets are any way going to react to those numbers. If not the same day, then they will react the next day.

They might gap up (open higher than the previous day close) or gap down (open lower than the previous day close). Just by releasing the number post market hours doesn’t warrant a non reaction or a more logical reaction from the markets.

On top of that

Apart from that one must also remember the nature of a knee-jerk reaction. As its name implies, it is a short term reaction which occurs spontaneously to a particular news event. The key words are short term and spontaneous.

Short term reactions don’t last very long. A knee jerk reaction from the market usually lasts a few minutes and at the most an hour. Smart money usually kicks in by that time and takes opposite positions to the knee jerk move.

So, I’m not sure why the government is so worried about a knee jerk reaction which is short lived anyway.

The government should rather focus its attention on more productive things like keeping the fiscal deficit in check and passing reforms which would actually boost the economy.

Once it does the basics right, it doesn’t need to worry about silly things like releasing the macroeconomic data at 5:30 PM or maybe 2 AM when everyone is asleep and hoping the market wouldn’t react the next day.

Reference – http://mospi.nic.in/

Image credit – Discos Konfort

Nifty PE ratio, P/B, Dividend yield charts

Nifty PE ratio chart Sengukoi.com

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1) Nifty PE, P/B, dividend yield (excel workbook)

2) 14 Years Nifty PE, P/B, dividend yield (plain chart)

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View latest Nifty PE, P/B, dividend yield on the NSE website

Introduction

Nifty is a widely followed Indian stock market index comprising of the 50 largest publicly traded companies in India.

What is PE ratio?

PE ratio refers to price to earnings ratio. It is a widely used and simple ratio used to determine how cheap or expensive a stock/index is either historically or in the future (forward earnings), compared to its peers. More »

BoursaMost liquid index and stock options on the NSE

I had done a little research of my own yesterday (17th April 2013) and reviewed the 140 odd stock options available on NSE (National Stock Exchange, India). I spend around 30 seconds looking at each one of them on the NSE website and tried to categorize them into Tiers based on how liquid they are. As the Tier number increases, the liquidity (number of contracts traded each day) goes down. For example, Tier 1 stock options are more liquid than Tier 3 stock options and so forth.

Most liquid index options on NSE

Nifty, Bank Nifty

Most liquid stock options on NSE

Tier 1 (>2000 Contracts/day – 5)
Infosys, SBI, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, DLF Ltd More »