India: The best... and worst of times.

THE YEAR 2000 will go down in the history of the stock market as one of the most volatile years, echoing Charles Dicken's famous opening line in the Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...

The market capitalisation of broad-based and the composite BL-250 index, which closed on December 30, 1999 at Rs 6,51,471 crore, propelled by a sharp surge in FII inflows and a mad rush for technology stocks, soared to a high of Rs 9,00,293 crore by late February. But the Nasdaq meltdown punctured the liquidity-driven tech rally and the index plummetted without support from any of the other sectoral indices.

Although some of the Old Economy stocks staged a recovery in the second half of the year, it failed to have a material impact on the BL-250 index, which ended the year with a 23.5 per cent decline in value.

Sectoral leaders

After being mauled in 1999, banks and FIs emerged as the biggest gainer of the year, …