SKINDIA INDIAN GDR MONITOR
Volume VI No 40	Oct 01-Oct 07, 1999	08-Oct-99

The week saw the markets slowly inching up in the begining as most people had taken long positions in anticipation of a single majority government. The counting of votes began on wednesday and so did the major rally as National Democratic Alliance began to lead in the begining, however, this rally was short lived as the vote counting trends showed the Congress and its allies narrowing the gap with the BJP alliance. But by thursday it became more apparent that elections were over & so were the fears of a hung Parliament. The stockmarkets zoomed upwards like never before with all its parameters hitting historic highs. The sensex rose by 265 points touching its all time high at 4963, the biggest ever single day point gain the sensex ever registered also, Moody's Investor Services upgraded their rating of India from stable to positive and paved the way for hope of fresh foreign investments. Thus, the Skindia GDR Index & the BSE sensex were oscillating in a wide bands of 9.49% and 6.63% gaining 70.78 points & 198.68 points respectively. During the week the average premiums of the 63 DRs moved up to 9.29% on Oct 07 from 8.21% on Sept 30 & the average spreads between the 40 most actively traded DRs widened to 7.90% on Oct 07 from 6.66% on Sept 30. Over the week the 63 DRs on average gained 3.28% while the underlying shares gained 2.15%. In DRs the top gainer was the telecom sector appreciating 12.73% followed by IT & finance sector gaining 8.57% & 7.96% respectively. The only losers were the cable & textile sectors depreciating 2.24% and 0.42% respectively. On the other hand in the underlying shares the top gainer was the IT sector rising 10.60% followed by the telecom sector gaining 6.52% & by the steel sector which gained 4.25%. The losers were the aluminium & auto sectors losing 2.26% and 0.06% respectively. Pharma sector gaining strength: With the turn of the second quarter, the fortunes of the pharma stocks also seemed to have turned around. The pharma GDRs & shares which had recorded a loss of 11.14% and 12.72% on an average during the previous quarter ending June 30 turned positive in this quarter gaining 52.32% & 74.72% respectively. The Skindia GDR Pharma Index gave returns of 50.41% outperforming both the Skindia GDR Index & BSE sensex, which gave returns of 9.23% & 14.96% in the same period. The gain has been contributed by all the four Pharma GDR scrips. The highest gain has been contributed by Wockhardt which gained 82.61% followed by Dr.Reddy's 51.90%, Ranbaxy 46.21% & Corehealth 28.57%. The underlying shares behaved more or less the same. Here too Wockhardt was the top gainer with a rise of 138.95% followed by Dr.Reddy's at 77.47%, Ranbaxy at 64.74% & Corehealth at 17.72%. In the first week of Oct the Pharma GDRs appreciated 6.22% & their underlying shares by 0.33%. Wockhardt and Dr.Reddy's touched their 52-week highs on Oct 06 at $12.50 and $31.50 respectively.

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