Secure Dreams from Max Newyork - Review.

Max New York Life Insurance Company Ltd. is a joint venture between New York Life, LLC and Max India Limited . Recently they launced a plan called "Secure Dreams" . The name of the plan caught my fancy and I took a peek at the plan and here is what I found.

Secure dreams can be availed of if you are in the age range of 21 to 55. Depending on your pocket you can pay a premium ranging annually from Rs.15000 to Rs.200000 if you are below age 40and for ages above 40 the maximum payment is restricted to Rs.100000 a year. Tenure of the policy is from 11 to 20 years. The built in Insurance cover is 10 times the annual premium paid.

The amount you pay is invested in a controlled fund investing in fixed income bearing instruments after deducting 30% for the first Rs.50000 of your payment.


The company guarantees a 3.5% annual interest rate compounded monthly but deducts monthly charges. Illustrations, in their brouchre shows that if you are of age 35 and willing to invest Rs.50000 per year, for 15 years you get a yield of only 2.1%. So a down swing in your mind from 3.5% to 2.1% is inevitable if you go through the brouchre in detail. Then why the 3.5% ,maybe to catch your fancy for the product, it certainly did catch mine and that's why I took a look.

Continuance of insurance cover exists in the plan, Let us see how it works, First of all, you get it only if you pay premiums for three years, then if you are unable to pay your premiums the account value of your policy,(which means your accrued benefit) will be used to provide continous insurance cover until your policy surrender value reaches to one annual premium.

Now for the surrender value in this plan, which can only be availed after paying two annual premiums in full. Looking at the surrender value chart below you can find that , it seems quite difficult to provide continous cover for a long term if your policy lapses in the first 10 years. Moreover this also gives you a clear picture of what you may loose if you surrender in the first 10 years.

Surrender year	Deduct from Policy account value
2nd year	90%
3 rd year	80%
4th year	70%
5 th year	50%
6th year	40%
7th year	20%
8th year	15%
9th year	7.5%
10th year	Nil

The plan pays you a loyalty additon @ 10% of your annual premium. But to get it you have to reach the last 5 years of the term, and thereafter loyalty is added yearly till your policy is in force. If your policy lapses dont think, you can revive your policy and get the loyalty. It doesnt work that way.

First of all, you can only revive your policy in 2 years from date of lapse.Secondly you get the loyalty only from the year you did the revival.

On death all future premiums to be paid are funded by the company and invested towards the account value , besides the inbuilt sum assured of 10 times the annual premium is also included in the death benefit.

Partial withdrawls are available after 3 years with a minimum withdrawl of Rs. 10000, but the maximum withdrawl should be less than 75% of the account value or 1.5 times of the annual premium whichever is lower. Six partial withdrawls in a year are free thereafter you can be charged @ Rs.1000 (revisable upto 2000) per withdrawl.

Monthly administration charge is deducted till end of term of your policy. It is calculated at 0.125% of the sum assured ( Sum assured is 10 times your annual premium). for the first three years. After three years you have to pay Rs.150 monthly as administration charge till end of the term.
(Rs 20 to Rs 60 is the standard admn charge running under many companies. Better check.)

Plan provides for paying Top up premiums, but 2% of the so paid top up premium is deducted as charges, besides , top ups recieved upto the last three years of policy term have a lockin period of 3 years and the maximum top up is limited to 25% of all paid premiums.

Insurance cover charge known as mortality charge is deducted form your account value.
For example if you are of age 35 and pay Rs.50,000 as yearly premium for a term of 15 years, the insurance cover will be Rs.5,00,000 ( 10 times of premium) and you will be charged Rs. 936 for the year. Next year your age increases so does your deductible mortality charge.

Lastly there is no loan available under this policy.

Example:

Age 35 - , Term 15 - , Premium Rs. 50,000 per year , Cumpulsory sum assured will be Rs.5,00,000. No Top ups.

Deductions in the first year.
Allocation charge············= Rs. 15000 (@30%)
Administration charge······= Rs 7500 ( 625 x 12)
Mortality charges············= Rs 936
If top ups made deduct···= 2% of top up + lockin of next 3 years.
The deduction of service charge as per the govt. directives has not be mentioned here as it is common to all services in india.

Deductions for 2nd and 3rd year
Administration charge······= Rs 7500 (625 x 12)
Mortality charge···············= Greater than Rs.936 (as with each year age increases)
If top ups made deduct···= 2% of top up + lockin of next 3 years.
The deduction of service charge as per the govt. directives has not be mentioned here as it is common to all services in india.

Deductions after 3rd year till end of term
Administration charge······= Rs 1800 (150 x 12)
Mortality charge···············= Greater than Rs.936 (as with each year age increases)
If top ups made deduct···= 2% of top up + lockin of next 3 years.
The deduction of service charge as per the govt. directives has not be mentioned here as it is common to all services in india.

Now you can get a feel of what amount of yours is being invested, on what the 3.5 % is being paid and why the yield after a whopping 15 year duration stands at 2.1% in the company's plan illustration.

Is the secure dream from Max newyork life a secure dream for you or ............ ???? I leave it for your prudent judgement.

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look for hidden costs in Ulips

This is an article published on the Live Mint educating an average investor on the hidden costs in Ulips.

Much like other statutory warnings that manufacturers of harmful products hope you won’t really listen to, ads for unit-linked insurance policies (Ulips) are followed by a jaded voice, chanting: “Please read the policy document before investing”. And, there is a very good reason for you to heed that voice. Insurance companies are removing costs that you recognize and are stuffing them in places that you don’t see yet. To understand the issue fully, we need to understand all the Ulip costs first.

An average Ulip comes with four cost heads. The first you encounter and, hence, recognize, is the premium allocation charge (PAC) or what the mutual funds call a “load”. This is a straight deduction from the premium cheque you write before even one rupee goes to work for either insurance or investment. In some policies you lose between Rs40,000 and Rs70,000 out of a premium of Rs1 lakh in the first year. This face of the enemy you already know. The second cost is called mortality charge, which is the cost of pure life insurance (what you would pay in a term policy that sells just a life cover without the bundled investment).

How it hurts

But how do we know that the 100% allocation Ulips cost as much, if not more, than those that do not use administration costs in this manner? The only way to see what a policy will finally cost is to look at its return, net of costs, on an illustration (or example) of an assumed return of 10% per year. This means that if the policy returns 10% per year, post accounting for costs, it would return, say, 8%. The 2 percentage points gap is the cost that you pay each year. Our research shows that an efficient Ulip returns 8% or more net of costs (on an assumed 10% return).

We examined four Ulips with less than 10% PAC in the first year and looked at their net return (on a 10% illustration). We found that in all cases, the net return was below 8% (see chart).

But do note that the net returns are within the regulatory cost limit fixed by the regulator. But also note that in a competitive market, regulatory caps are ceilings and not floors. The insurers are themselves divided on the correctness of linking administration costs to the sum assured.


The third cost is fund management charge, which is now capped at 1.35% of the fund value. You pay this charge to your fund manager to invest your money well.

The fourth is the policy administration charge. Traditionally, this was as little as Rs50 a month or Rs600 a year, irrespective of the insurance amount or the premium you paid. It was a fixed cost that took care of expenses of an insurer such as paper work, stamp duty, welcome kit and policy brochures (note that mutual funds take care of all these costs plus fund management from the 2% annual charge).

Now, here is the rub. Some insurance companies are linking this administration cost to either the premium or the sum assured and using the cash to pay commissions, medical underwriting cost and marketing cost, while keeping the PAC either zero or less than 10%. Says Andrew Cartwright, chief actuary, Kotak Life Insurance: “At least 40% of the first-year premium is required to recover the cost of a Ulip. This cost was recovered through PAC. But now with PAC gaining visibility, this cost is recovered through the administration charge.” The agent, while selling the plan, usually forgets to point out the cost padding in the administration charge, but does highlight the 100% allocation feature quite well.

Differentiated service experience includes a basket of services such as welcome calling, separate queues at call centre and a quarterly lifestyle magazine Of course, it is debatable whether you will want to pay for, or even, get this preferential treatment. But since this cost is not negotiable, you end up paying for services which you may not want or even get. Our advice: don’t get taken in by the 100% allocation sales smart talk, ask for the net return (also called an internal rate of return) on a 10% illustration. If the return is less than 8%, avoid the plan.

Read at source

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Cent Swabhiman plus launched

Central Bank of India and Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co. Ltd. have launched a novel Reverse Mortgage enabled Loan Annuity Product branded as CENT SWABHIMAN PLUS in the presence of Hon'ble Union Minister of State for Finance, Shri Namo Narain Meena at a function held at Delhi on December 10, 2009. Cent Swabhiman Plus is a unique and tailor-made product to facilitate senior citizens to avail regular payments throughout their life-time. Such an Annuity Product assuming life-time payments is being made available for the first time in this country.
This Annuity Product is an alternative to the Reverse Mortgage Loan product viz. Cent Swabhiman, which is already available from Central Bank and from some other banks and Housing Finance Companies. The new product is an improvement over the existing product in two important aspects. First, lifetime payment is assured as against maximum of 20 years in the existing similar products. Second, the quantum of monthly payment is significantly higher.
Senior citizens above the age of 60 years and also with eligible spouse of 55 years of minimum age cap can get this life time annuity against the mortgage of their self-owned and self occupied house and they can also continue to stay in the house as long as the last surviving spouse is alive.

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Pvt cos pinch more in Ulip surrender

An article written By S. P. S. Pannu. This article was printed in the Mail Today, ,New delhi, dated 23.11.2009.

Private life insurance companies seem to be giving a raw deal to customers who want to surrender their unit- linked life insurance policies ( ULIPs) after the lock- in period of three years. Glib talk by insurance agents who sell these policies does not reveal the hidden costs that are forced on to customers who may well end up getting only a fraction of the money that they have deposited by way of premium when they wind up their policy after the lock- in period. Sanjeev Raheja, a middle- aged executive looking for both security and quick returns that sales agents promise, found to his horror that after having deposited Rs 30,000 as a premium for three years with private life insurer Aviva got back only Rs 12,250 when he surrendered his ULIP recently.

Rahejas mother was admitted to hospital for an expensive knee surgery and as a dutiful son he wanted to encash all his savings to meet the expenses. Aviva executives bombarded him with telephone calls and SMSes askin g him not to wind up his policy. But since he had to fall back on every rupee that he could muster to meet the huge medical bill he did not have a choice. According to an Aviva statement, Raheja who opted for the ULIP growth fund of the company had Rs 18,925 in his account on June, 2008. Since a major portion of this fund is invested in shares and the market had crashed in 2008 this was still a sizable amount. Raheja said, “I expected the total fund value to go up in 2009 as the stock market had made a smart recovery during the year. But instead I ended up getting only Rs 12,250.”

According to sources, private companies pay very high commissions to sales agents and also charge management fee, which is not disclosed by the sales agents at the time of roping in the customer. These hidden costs are deducted from the policy holders account when the policy is surrendered. Most of the products offered under ULIP schemes are not too easy for the layman to understand and suave agents manage to take them for a ride. According to sources, private companies indulge agents who help them meet stiff targets. Lavish five- star holidays are often thrown in as part of yearly bashes to pep up agents. But all these only add to the administrative expenses. And it appears that customers end up footing the bill.

The fact that insurance companies have a tie- up with banks to sell insurance policies also gives a fillip to this business as customers tend to trust the banks they have been dealing with. Similarly, banks have also been selling mutual funds to their customers. Sources disclose that the Reserve Bank of India ( RBI) has now asked banks to give customers complete details of the amount of commission and other fees that they get from the sale of these financial products. Read at source. (click on the arrow near the right side of the epaper till you reach page 33)
sps. pannu@ mailtoday. in

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Best to stay away from guaranteed NAV plans

Posting here an interesting article pointed out to me by Mr. Thennarasu. N. The article is from DNA money and you can read full at source from Here
The flavour of the season for insurance companies seems to be the guaranteed net asset value plans, or guaranteed NAV plans, as they are known as in popular parlance. This is not surprising as the last date for this financial year (March 31, 2010) comes closer, and people get ready to make tax-saving investments. Also, with last year's stock market crash still fresh in the minds of investors, any sort of guarantee on investment makes for a good marketing proposition. So here is a lowdown on what these plans are all about and why it makes sense for you to avoid them:

What is a guaranteed NAV plan?
It is essentially a 10-year unit linked insurance plan (Ulip) which guarantees the highest NAV for a period of the first seven years of the plan. Ulips are investment plans which come with some amount of insurance cover. The majority of the insurance premium paid for investing in an Ulip is invested in an investment fund. For the insurance cover, the insurance company charges a mortality premium every month.

How does the guarantee work?
Let us say you invest in a guaranteed investment plan now at a price of Rs 10 per unit. Five years down the line, the NAV is Rs 30, after that the NAV starts to fall and at the time of maturity 10 years on, the NAV is at Rs 15. These plans guarantee the highest NAV achieved during the period of the first seven years of the policy. So, in this case, you will get paid Rs 30 per unit at maturity even though the NAV of a single unit at that point of time is quoting at Rs 15.

In a more optimistic scenario, if the NAV at maturity is Rs 45, you will be paid Rs 45 per unit. Essentially, the insurance company will pay you the highest of the following three things -- the highest NAV achieved during the first seven years of the policy,the NAV at maturity and Rs 10 per unit. So far so good. Read on to figure the problems.

What does the plan invest in?
These plans have a flexibility of investing up to 100% in equity as well as debt. Insurance companies which have launched such plans are of the view that they will decide on the allocation between debt and equity depending on the state of the market. So, if equity markets fall, investments will be moved from equity to debt and vice versa. This is where things get interesting. As any serious market observer will tell you, guaranteeing investments being made into the stock market is not the best way to operate. If such funds plan to invest 100% in equity, how can they guarantee the highest

NAV, given the fact that the highest NAV will be obvious only in retrospect?
So let's dig a little deeper into the example we had taken at the beginning. Let us say an insurance company is able to raise Rs 1,000 crore for such a plan by selling units at Rs 10 per unit. Now, during the course of operation, the NAV hits Rs 30, five years down the line. This means the Rs 1,000 crore collected initially is now worth Rs 3,000 crore. As assumed above, Rs 30 is the highest NAV achieved.

At the time of maturity, one unit is worth Rs 15, and the total investments are hence worth Rs 1,500 crore. But as per the guarantee given, the investors need to be compensated the rate of Rs 30 NAV, and hence Rs 3,000 crore is needed. Rs 1,500 crore can be raised by selling the investments at the time of maturity.

This still leaves Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 3,000 crore guarantee - Rs 1,500 crore value of present investments) to be got. So the question is, where is the Rs 1,500 crore going to come from?

The insurance company will compensate the investors from its own pockets. But Rs 1,500 crore is a lot of money.

What are such plans betting on?
To an extent, the above example was a rather extreme one -- no company would be willing to take on such huge losses. From the look of it, these companies will have a higher exposure to equity initially and will gradually move the investments into debt as the date of maturity nears. So towards maturity, these funds are likely to have significantly more investments in debt than in equity. Also, the funds are likely to keep booking equity gains and moving them into debt over the period of the plan. This, in a way, will ensure that the equity gains are cashed in, the NAV does not go to very high levels, and the loss on account of the guarantee, if any, is minimal.

Reasons to stay away
The first and foremost is that equity markets and guarantees are a very risky idea, as explained above. The Securities & Exchange Board of India, the stock market and mutual fund regulator, does not allow mutual funds to guarantee returns. But insurance companies come under the ambit of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, which has been clearing such plans from insurance companies.

For those who do not remember how risky stock markets and guarantees can be, let us go back a few years in history, and talk about the Unit Trust of India (UTI). UTI had around Rs 17,000 crore invested in its assured return schemes and all these schemes had to be shut down in 2002 when things started to go haywire.

The insurance companies running these plans haven't elaborated on how exactly they plan to manage the guarantee. Investors should also keep in mind that in the world of finance there are no holy cows, as the recent financial crisis clearly shows. Some of the best names in finance have gone bust and 10 years is a long time.

It is next to impossible to figure out which is the best insurance company when it comes to investment performance, given the different charges that different insurance companies have.

During the course of the plan, you may realise that the returns haven't been up to the mark in comparison to the broader market and may want to exit. Or you may want to exit simply because you need the money. Exiting a Ulip can be a costly affair. This is primarily because most Ulips have upfront charges which they recover from the investor in order to pay high commissions to insurance agents. Also, the guarantee that comes with these plans is applicable only if the investor stays the entire duration of the plan.

The solution
If you want to invest in the stock market and save on taxes, invest in tax-saving mutual funds. These funds have very low upfront charges and come with a lock in of three years. If three years down the line, you figure out that the performance is not up to the mark, you can simply encash the money and switch to investing in some other mutual fund. If you are looking for an insurance cover as well, buy a term insurance policy. Also, if you are the kind who is looking for guaranteed return, invest in the public provident fund, national savings certificate and tax-saving fixed deposits. And remember that stock markets and guarantees are an extremely risky proposition and don't go together

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Planning to invest in Ulips? Wait till January 2010

If you are keen on investing in unit-linked insurance policies (Ulips), wait till the
New Year. From December 31, existing Ulips will get phased out following new regulations on charges from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority(Irda).

The new plans will conform to the cap of 3 per cent on charges. The new Ulips will help policyholders earn returns better than the present crop of Ulips. This would be possible because the amount invested from the first premium paid will be much higher than it is now. The upfront deduction of charges would stop and would be spread over a longer period, thus increasing the returns for policyholders.

All the products will be revised and will conform to the new rule from January 1 next year.Irda announced the new regime of Ulip charges in June 2009. Accordingly, the charges will be capped at 3 per cent (300 basis points) for a policy with tenure of up to 10 years, of which fund management charges cannot be more than 1.5 per cent (150 basis points).

For policy tenures above 10 years, the charges cannot exceed 2.25 per cent, of which the fund management charges cannot exceed 1.25 per cent (125 basis points).Insurance companies will have to provide customers charts on the gross yields and the net yields (after deducting all charges). The difference between gross and net yields cannot exceed 2.25 per cent (225 basis points) for product with tenures of more than 10 years and 3 per cent for products with tenures of up to 10 years. going forward, policies with borderline terms of 10, 11, 12 years will not be pushed by companies. According to Mathur, products with five-seven-year terms will slowly be phased out because companies won’t find value in selling such products.

Until now, all insurance companies were deducting fund management charges, mortality charges and charges on yields upfront, that is from the first premium paid. In many cases, around 80-100 per cent of the first premium was usurped by the private companies by way of various charges and allocations to funds were made only from the second premium.

With a cap on overall charges, the customers stand to benefit in the form of higher returns on their investment. Moreover, life insurance companies will now be encouraged to sell long-term products because there are lower charges on products with a term greater than 10 years.

The move by Irda follows what mutual funds (MFs) are allowed to charge. MFs can charge up to 2.5 per cent of assets under management (AUMs) under various heads as fees.

I give credits to Sneha Shah & Rajendra M Palande of financial chronicle for this write up.

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HDFC std. asked to pay up maturity claim with 8% interest

The Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Ahmedabad City (Additional), has directed HDFC Standard Life Insurance to return Rs 1,32,593 to a client along with 8 per cent interest and Rs 1,500 towards cost, for deficiency in service and unfair trade practice.Daksha Bandopadhyay had charged the company with deficiency in service and unfair trade practice. The decision came in a case filed by Bandopadhyay and the Consumer Education and Research Society (CERS). Bandopadhyay had purchased a single-premium personal accident plan from the company by paying a one-time premium of Rs 1 lakh. The policy was to begin on November 20, 2003. In June, Bandopadhyay received a letter stating that the policy was ‘due for vesting’ in September and the process amount was Rs 1,40,653. The letter further said, “Please note that in case you wish to surrender your pension plan, we request you to notify us at least seven days prior to the vesting date”.
Read at source

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Walking The Sensex

People have slowly started returning back to the markets. ULIP's are getting back its sheen. Even though many think otherwise, For the Investor who has been prudent enough to buy more when the sensex dipped is bound to reap more by the end of this fiscal year. The Largest desi institutional investor in the Markets LIC made a Profit of about 25000 crores in the falling markets and the bear phase which envoleped it.
Now people have realised that markets arer ruled by sentiments and not the actual pricing, so maybe the sensex is gaining momentum for the better . But, this I leave it to your prudent judgement to decide. When the Sensex bus has started running I thought this piece of information might be academically important for one to know where the sensex stands.

This post has been classified into Rebounding sensex, Historical Moments, Emotional Moments.Where is the SENSEX bus headed to ? I leave it to your prudent Judgement. Even though it might be worth considering that one watches the BSE-100 Indices more. I thank Wikipedia for sharing this Information on the Chronological moments of the sensex.

SENSEX ( BSE Sensex or Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index) .

Sensex is a value-weighted index composed of 30 stocks that started on January 1, 1986. It consists of the 30 largest and most actively traded stocks,representative of various sectors, on the Bombay Stock Exchange. The base value of the sensex is 100 on April 1, 1979, and the base year of BSE-SENSEX is 1978-79.

Historical Moments.

• 1000 - July 25, 1990 - On July 25, 1990, the Sensex touched the four-digit figure for the first time and closed at 1,001 in the wake of a good monsoon and excellent corporate results.



• 2000 - January 15, 1992 - On January 15, 1992, the Sensex crossed the 2,000-mark and closed at 2,020 followed by the liberal economic policy initiatives undertaken by the then finance minister and current Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.



• 3000 - February 29, 1992 - On February 29, 1992, the Sensex surged past the 3000 mark in the wake of the market-friendly Budget announced by Manmohan Singh.



• 4000 - March 30, 1992 - On March 30, 1992, the Sensex crossed the 4,000-mark and closed at 4,091 on the expectations of a liberal export-import policy. It was then that the Harshad Mehta scam hit the markets and Sensex witnessed unabated selling.



• 5000 - October 11, 1999 - On October 8, 1999, the Sensex crossed the 5,000-mark as the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition won the majority in the 13th Lok Sabha election.



• 6000 - February 11, 2000 - On February 11, 2000, the information technology boom helped the Sensex to cross the 6,000-mark and hit and all time high of 6,006.



• 7000 - June 21, 2005 - On June 20, 2005, the news of the settlement between the Ambani brothers boosted investor sentiments and the scrips of RIL, Reliance Energy, Reliance Capital and IPCL made huge gains. This helped the Sensex crossed 7,000 points for the first time.



• 8000 - September 8, 2005 - On September 8, 2005, the Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark 30-share index - the Sensex - crossed the 8000 level following brisk buying by foreign and domestic funds in early trading.



• 9000 - December 9, 2005 - The Sensex on November 28, 2005 crossed 9000 to touch 9000.32 points during mid-session at the Bombay Stock Exchange on the back of frantic buying spree by foreign institutional investors and well supported by local operators as well as retail investors.



• 10,000 -February 7, 2006 - The Sensex on February 6, 2006 touched 10,003 points during mid-session. The Sensex finally closed above the 10,000-mark on February 7, 2006.



• 11,000 -March 27, 2006 - The Sensex on March 21, 2006 crossed 11,000 and touched a peak of 11,001 points during mid-session at the Bombay Stock Exchange for the first time. However, it was on March 27, 2006 that the Sensex first closed at over 11,000 points.



• 12,000 - April 20, 2006 - The Sensex on April 20, 2006 crossed 12,000 and touched a peak of 12,004 points during mid-session at the Bombay Stock Exchange for the first time.



• 13,000 - October 30, 2006 - The Sensex on October 30, 2006 crossed 13,000 for the first time. It touched a peak of 13,039.36 and finally closed at 13,024.26.



• 14000 - December 5, 2006 - The Sensex on December 5, 2006 crossed 14,000.



• 15,000 - July 6, 2007 - The Sensex on July 6, 2007 crossed 15,000 mark.



• 16,000 - September 19, 2007 - The Sensex on September 19, 2007 crossed the 16,000 mark.



• 17,000 - September 26, 2007 - The Sensex on September 26, 2007 crossed the 17,000 mark for the first time.



• 18,000 - October 9, 2007 - The Sensex on October 9, 2007 crossed the 18,000 mark for the first time.



• 19,000 - October 15, 2007 - The Sensex on October 15, 2007 crossed the 19,000 mark for the first time.



• 20,000 - October 29, 2007 - The Sensex on October 29, 2007 crossed the 20,000 mark for the first time.



• 21,000 - Jan 08, 2008 - The Sensex on January 8, 2008 touched all time peak of 21078 before closing at 20873.[3]

Emotional Moments.

• May 22, 2006, the Sensex plunged by 1100 points during intra-day trading



• May 18, 2009, the sensex surged 2110.79 points from the previous closing of 12174.42 this leading to the suspension of trade for the whole day



• July 27, 2007 the Sensex witnessed a huge correction because of selling by Foreign Institutional Investors



• October 16, 2007, SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India) proposed curbs on participatory notes which accounted for roughly 50% of FII investment in 2007



• October 17, 2007. Within a minute of opening trade, the Sensex crashed by 1744 points or about 9% of its value - the biggest intra-day fall in Indian stock markets in absolute terms till then



• January 21, 2008, the Sensex saw its highest ever loss of 1,408 points at the end of the session.



• January 22, 2008, the BSE Sensex index went into a free fall. The index hit the lower circuit breaker in barely a minute after the markets opened at 10 AM. Trading was suspended for an hour. On reopening at 10.55 AM IST, the market saw its biggest intra-day fall when it hit a low of 15,332, down 2,273 points

Rebounding Sensex ??? ( Month end closing figures)

October 17, 2008	9975
October 24, 2008	8701
October 30th	9788
November 2008	9092
December 2008	9647
January 2009	9424
February 2009	8891
March 2009	9708
April 2009	11403
May 2009	14625
June 2009	14493
July 2009	15670
August - 2009	15666
september 2009	17126
October 2009	15896
November 2009	16926
December 01, 2009	17198

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