Thursday, October 20, 2005

The falling Indian stock market and telecom

I suspected that the Sensex figure of 8800+ on BSE to be overly high. In about 40 days or so over September and October, Sensex shot up crazily - from around 8000 to 8800+. Now it has come back to less than 8000. (7,935.12 on Thursday, October 20th.) This level seems more reasonable, at least for now (from what the technical analysts seem to indicate).

However, nothing seems to have changed drastically in terms of the fundamentals, so this level is good for medium term investors. If I had some money now, I will put that on Telecom firms (Bharti). FDI cap in telecom has gone up to 74% starting today. I will put my money on Hutch IPO or any other telecom IPO. I am still not sure about Tata Indicom/VSNL though.

Meanwhile, I couldn't understand much about the DoT officers being taken back from the deputation to MTNL/BSNL. The Hindustan Times quotes Indian Telecom Services Association (ITSA) President SS Sirohi saying "Fall of MTNL and BSNL starts from today... This is what most of the private operators wanted. Department of Telecom's (DoT) order to withdraw top management officials and putting them in a surplus cell of government will affect the quality as well as growth of services." If BSNL and MTNL think these 1,000 officers are so important, offer them a bloody good pay package! They will take voluntary retirement from the Govt. service and take up your offer.

Sometimes, I find it difficult to understand employee unions.

No comments:

Post a Comment