CSE Members: After good and ugly days, their friendship's stock remains high

They have first-hand experience of the bear crashes and the bull rallies of the last three decades.
CSE Members: After good and ugly days, their friendship's stock remains high

KOCHI: They have first-hand experience of the bear crashes and the bull rallies of the last three decades. The Harshad Mehta scam in 1992 forced many to shut shop and those who survived and made money in the dot-com bubble of the late 1998-99 phase faced another maelstrom of dot-com crash and the Ketan Parekh scam of 2001. From then on till the 2008-crash, they enjoyed the longest bull-run witnessed in the Indian markets.

The period also saw the Indian market transforming from an open outcry system, which allowed stockbrokers, who were doing transaction business face-to-face on the trading floor, to do business at their offices on the trading screen. The Cochin Stock Exchange (CSE) where they were members ended trading in 2005.

Now to reconnect and revive the old camaraderie, the erstwhile CSE members have floated ‘Bulls and Bears,’ a group which will meet on a regularly to share trading/investment ideas, besides formulating schemes to encourage youngsters to take up the stock market as a serious profession.

“The first meeting of ‘Bulls and Bears’ was held nearly three months back but it had only 36 members. The second meeting, held at the Bolgatty Palace on Saturday, saw the  membership touching 75,” said Giby Mathew, managing director, Celebrus Capital, who began his stock market entry in 1992 as a CSE sub-broker.

In between Giby along with two others floated JRG Securities, launched its IPO, before hitting the turbulent times just like the market, ending in the sale of the company to Barings Private Equity in 2007. “The old-CSE members’ meeting was also a nostalgic affair with all of us conducting a ‘mock trading’ at Bolgatty Palace - just for the fun of it,” said Giby, whose Celebrus Capital is established itself in Kerala for both equities and commodities trading.

P Y Narayanan, vice-president of ‘Bulls and Bears,’ said:  “No one is entering the stock market full-time for fear of losing money. No parent will want their kids to enter this profession. We want to educate the youngsters on the nuances of the market, share our experience, besides exchanging between us useful literature in our Whatsapp group,” he said. Narayanan was a ‘lion’ operator at CSE for Mumbai-based Joindre Capital during 1997-98. ‘Lion’ is an arbitrageur whose job involves helping his firm to buy/sell stocks, taking note of difference in stock prices in Bombay Stock Exchange and CSE (in this case).

“Since online trading was not introduced then the price differences could be as high as `5 for a Tisco (now Tata Steel) share. The Mumbai office would check prices in CSE. There were instances when the share price here was `360 and `365 in Mumbai. We used to buy 5000 shares from CSE and sell it in BSE to make a clean profit of Rs 5/sh,” he reminisced. He said ‘Bulls and Bears’ would introduce the members to algo-trading as many members have been unaware of the process.

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