Retail rush jams online terminals

Source Telegraph

Retail rush jams online terminals

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Investors in Mumbai on Tuesday. (Reuters) Mumbai, Jan. 22: Even as the sensex plummeted around 2200 points this morning, retail investors were scrambling to scoop up frontline stocks at bargain basement prices. Online trading sites received a record number of hits and many investors were frustrated as the websites were jammed by heavy traffic after noon. “Having heard of the 2200-point fall around 11.30 am, I tried logging on to my online trading account. I wanted to pick up some telecom, and oil and gas stocks that were looking very good. But I just couldn’t put through my transaction ... the site was virtually crawling. I gave up after an hour,” said Ritesh Shah, a retail investor. Reliance Money, the brokerage arm of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, reported that at one point there were 1.55 lakh people trading simultaneously on their website after the choppy morning session. “Investors have shown a great deal of maturity. Instead of the usual panic, they have waited for the right opportunity and are picking the right stocks at low prices. We’ve received investments between Rs 500 crore and Rs 600 crore from retail investors today as against the Rs 300-400 crore average in December when the sensex was at a record high,” said Sudip Bandyopadhyay, director and CEO of Reliance Money. “This is unusual but a very good trend,” added Bandyopadhyay who was flooded with calls throughout the day. “We continue to receive more queries from people, who are not exposed to the market. They want to know whether they should be entering the market now and what stocks to buy,” he said. Responding to complaints from a large section of online investors, a HDFC Securities spokesperson said, “Any system is designed to handle a certain amount of traffic. In the face of such an unprecedented traffic, any site will slow down. But it recovered very soon.” Market observers said investors were either trying to average out the costs of their earlier investments in their favourite stocks or were simply bottom-fishing.