Our bizarre share bazaar is holding up a mirror to us

There was a time when the Indian stock market behaved like a market. Today, it behaves like a patient running fever.

- SRINATH SRIDHARAN

It has the energy, delirium and confidence of someone who thinks the body can run faster because its temperature is 103° Fahrenheit. The frenzy of investors, the breathless market movements, the cult of FOMO (fear of missing out), the reverence for every new stock listing, as if it were the second coming of prosperity—all of it creates a spectacle that is at once fascinating and deeply worrying. Something about this bazaar has become bizarre.

The most peculiar part of the current drama is the casual acceptance that a company can list its shares at a price that would make its promoters blush and then lose a quarter of its market value within months. This is now a routine cycle. We see a stunning listing-day pop. A honeymoon period of analysts singing paeans. And then a slow embarrassing decline once numbers begin to interrupt the romance. Of course, the sellers, especially promoters and private investors, have already walked out of the room by then. They have booked their profits, offered polite smiles to cameras and made their exit. It is the small investor who stays back to wash the dishes.