Heard on the Street

Heard on the Street

Domestic institutions lap up Mangalam Cement
Rajasthan-based Mangalam Cement is said to have caught the fancy of a few domestic institutions of late. The stock was the star performer on Monday, rising 9% to close at Rs 138, despite the overall trend being sluggish. With Monday’s gains, the stock has climbed around 20% over the past one month. Buzz is that a private insurance company is leading the pack of domestic buyers. This insurer is said to have mopped up close to 4%. Analysts tracking say Mangalam is one of the safer bets among small-cap cement stocks.

Short-sellers in JSW Energy may lose
Traders, who have gone short on the JSW Energy issue in the grey market, could find themselves in a spot of bother. Talk is that the issue is likely to be priced closer to the lower end of the price band of Rs 100-115. The issue, which has been subscribed 1.7 times, received a moderate response from investors. The company may have decided against pricing the issue aggressively.

A leading investment bank, which failed to find a place in the syndicate of lead managers to the issue, is said to have heavily short sold through grey market punters. The punters pushed the price down to a discount of around Rs 4 to the top end of the price band. Now, that the issue is likely to be priced even lower than that, the punters could be in for a nasty surprise. But they may still end up making a tidy profit, if the stock lists at a discount to the issue price.

Market sees delay in SME trading platform
The launch of the trading platform for SMEs by existing bourses is likely to be delayed, according to market participants, pointing to the statement made by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday in Rajya Sabha. “The need and criteria of listing at SME exchange/platform are different from those for listing on BSE and NSE. Therefore, it is felt that separate SME exchange/platform of existing stock exchanges are required,” said Pranab Mukherjee in Rajya Sabha.


Rs 100-cr fund for investor awareness
Sebi is planning a Rs 100-crore investor awareness fund that will be used to spread awareness about mutual fund investments. Industry sources said the regulator is working out a plan to pool in money for the fund from AMCs. The regulator may advise fund houses to forego a small portion of the expense ratio they collect from investors. Expense ratio is an income for MFs, as it covers fund management fee and administrative costs.

As per Sebi regulations, a MF can charge a maximum expense of 2.5% for equity funds, 2.25% for debt funds and 1.5% for index funds

and 0.75% for fund of funds. MFs, on their part, maintain a small corpus of fund (also termed investor awareness fund) to educate investors. “Contributing for one more fund will further cripple the industry. As such, most fund houses are logging huge losses operating in the current environment,” said the CEO of a domestic fund house.

Contributed by Apurv Gupta, Santosh Nair, Reena Zachariah & Shailesh Menon


Src: Economictimes

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