Friday the 13th, not so bad

The dreaded Friday the 13th has come and gone. It seems the equity markets in the US and India have benefited from it. On Friday, both benchmarks Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and the BSE’s Sensex hit all time highs, the DJIA hit 11,960.51 while the Sensex hit 12,719.53. But, there is still no joy in mudville, although these indexes have scaled all time highs people are still not celebrating. In the US, I assume it’s because the Nasdaq is still around 2350, no where near its all time high of 5500. In India, most people I talk to are still reeling from the crash of May/June. When the Sensex crossed 12,000 all the business news networks were celebrating, I’m fairly sure that won’t happen for 13,000. In addition, some of the biggest falls have happened in October. On Oct 19, 1987 the DJIA fell 22.6% in a day. Last October the Sensex fell 1200 points during Diwali, which is generally the festive season. Clearly, not very festive for some investors.