After two bad monsoons and two bad years at the stockmarket, Jayesh Seth has the unmistakable air of being back on a high. The Mumbai stockbroker has been adding 50-100 new investors every month since May. No wonder his 40 phone lines can't keep pace. But then they've also been a casua
lty of the market downturn. "Two years ago we had 85 lines. Then the market fell and we cut them down to 40. Now my staff is going crazy handling the phones, so we'll have to add more," says Seth, who is the MD of Kantilal Chaganlal Securities.
A good monsoon has, among other things, pulled the recently sluggish Bombay Stock Exchange index up to a 28-month high. Of course, good corporate results, the Maruti IPO and the spiralling international markets have done their bit but a good monsoon has given the market the jumpstart it needed. "It was the last missing piece in the puzzle," says Seth.
Seth is now investing more than he has in a long time. In fact, the volume of stocks actually being delivered—that is, investment rather than speculation—has more than doubled in the last few months. "We have never seen anything like this before." He'll even admit, although quickly, that his own portfolio has been doing well. And while the buzz is palpable, Seth also says the market's dependence on the monsoon has come down in the last few years since the growth of the services sector and increased farmland under irrigation. "A bad monsoon is not as disastrous for us as it was, say, 10 years ago."
All the same, in the broking offices that fill up the narrow lanes near the bse, "we're checking meteorological office forecasts often and if they are missed, people are a little nervy; if they are met, you can see the relief on their faces".