India misses out on the Asian surge

As if greedy bankers and sleeping policymakers were not enough to shake the world with the financial pandemic they helped create, the pigs are having their day in the sun now. Originating in Mexico, where almost 1,600 people have been taken ill and around 160 dead, a deadly swine flu is fast spreading its wings across the world.
The US government has declared a health emergency within the country. A spokesman for the World Health Organisation has said that the virus was spreading quickly in Mexico and the southern US and has the potential to become a pandemic and a global threat. While there's no news of the flu entering India so far, we need to keep our fingers crossed. After all, the memories of SARS are still tough to forget. Though India was relatively untouched by SARS in 2003, we cannot afford to let our guard down.
Anyways, the global stockmarkets seem to have taken risks like these in their stride given the turmoil they have seen over the past 15 months or so. This week, for instance, markets around the world did not seem to panic even when reports of swine flu spreading around the world flooded the media. Investors now seem to be more cheery about what looks like an economic recovery around the world. As seen from the performance of the Dow Jones yesterday (closed with 2.1% gains) and Asian markets today (most indices are up in a range of 3% to 6%), a flu pandemic does not seem such a worry given that investors are taking heart from signs of improvement in their respective economies.
Coming to the performance of Indian markets during this holiday shortened 3-day week (markets are closed today - April 30th - and tomorrow on account of Parliamentary Elections and Labour Day respectively), the benchmark BSE-Sensex clocked a marginal 0.7% gain. However, these gains were not without their share of volatility given that the Sensex rose 400 points on the final trading day (yesterday) after dropping by 370 points the previous day.
As for the performance of BSE sectoral indices, stocks forming part of the IT and banking sectors emerged as top gainers during the week. The BSE-IT and BSE-Bankex recorded gains of 4.2% and 1.7% respectively. On the other hand, stocks from the realty and metals spaces lead the pack of losers, with their benchmark indices dropping by 5.6% and 3.9% respectively on BSE during the week. Stocks from the BSE-Smallcap and BSE-Midcap indices also traded weak, declining by 2.4% and 3.1% respectively.