Jitters in overseas markets sent the domestic bourses crashing twice in the past eight days, but foreign investors were busy grabbing stocks here seeing attractive buying opportunities after the 1,000-point plunge.
Some big names of the FII clan, including Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, purchased stocks worth over Rs 676 crore between July 27 and August 1, when the market recorded its two biggest crashes of this fiscal.
Interestingly, most purchases were recorded on these two days only, even as the overall market sentiment was bearish following the 542 and 615-point fall in the benchmark Sensex.
Additional stocks
An analysis of the bulk and block deals recorded on the stocks exchanges shows that foreign funds purchased shares worth Rs 676.32 crore in the period when the Sensex tanked over 1,000 points in two routs between July 27 and August 1.
Besides, the funds are believed to have purchased additional stocks in smaller quantities, but their exact estimates could not be known. Bulk deal refers to trading in a company's shares for over 0.5 per cent of the total shares of the firm listed on the exchange.During this period of six trading sessions, the Sensex closed below the 15,000 mark on two occasions.
Morgan Stanley and Co International did some big time shopping during the period buying shares worth over Rs 487 crore in six companies, including Ansal Infrastructure, GVK Power Infrastructure and IDFC among others in bulk deals on the Bombay Stock Exchange. In contrast, it offloaded shares worth just Rs 2.98 crore in the past seven trading sessions.
Sale deals
Similarly, Citigroup Global Markets Mauritius bought shares worth over Rs 26 crore in four deals, while it sold shares worth six crore during the period. Among other major foreign shoppers were Goldman Sachs, Copthall Mauritius Investment and Merrill Lynch Capital Market Espana who were also seen buying stocks during the crash. In total, the foreign funds sold shares worth about Rs 82 crore during the same period, with most of the sale deals being executed after booking significant gains on investments.
While Merrill Lynch Capital Market sold shares worth about Rs 50 crore, selling by Copthall and Lehman Brothers were relatively small in the range of Rs 4-5 crore.
Net investment
Interestingly, the FIIs refrained from any big selling or purchase on August 2 and 3, when the Sensex was seen in a recovery mode and gained over 200 points. Five new foreign institutional investors have been registered with market regulator SEBI (Security Exchange Board of India ) within the past week, taking the total number to 1,070.
FIIs have recorded a net investment of close to Rs 42,000 crore (about 10 billion dollars) in Indian stocks so far in 2007, which is more than 8.5 billion dollars recorded in the entire 2006.
However, on collective basis, FIIs were net sellers to the tune of about Rs 1,200 crore on July 27 and about Rs 1,000 crore on August 1, the data available with SEBI show.
