Monday Mayhem: City Investors Left Reeling As Stocks, Bullion Sink | Nagpur News

Nagpur: The day when Sensex tanked 1800 points, gold fell over 30% from its peak and silver prices halved, the middle class was left worried with shrunken values of their savings and big-ticket investors hoped to avoid bankruptcy. Money sucked in by the meltdown has led to a liquidity crisis in traditional businesses, say traders. TOI looks into the scene at Nagpur.At Bharat Parekh Group, a key insurance and investment advisory firm, its business head, Manoj Rai, says he has been busy taking calls from harried investors. “Many are questioning falling returns, pointing to high projections made by the asset management companies at the time of selling. They must understand it’s because of international factors and not wrong investment,” says Rai. However, there is also a class which is seeing an investment opportunity as markets fall, he says.Looking at the net asset value (NAV) sheets of his mutual funds, a techie and seasoned investor, Shekhar Maheshwari, found the returns on his last 10 years’ savings have dipped to 12% from well over 17% earlier. It comes to below 7% after adjusting inflation, he says. His relative, Shailendra Maheshwari, also a software professional, found a similar fall in returns from his older investments. The funds invested recently are in the red zone, both say. However, both plan to stay invested, hoping the markets would recover.“There is also a class that may never return to the stock market now. The value of their holdings has shrunk to negligible levels. These are typically the newcomers and self-taught class of investors who have pumped in huge money only to suffer losses,” says G V Iyer of Apex Investments, a stockbroking firm here.A section of retail investors is also hoping to cash in on rising crude prices. Individual investor exposure in crude futures at the bourses has gone up, says Anuj Badjate of M/s Badjate Stock Trading. There may be a bloodbath in the stock market, but silver has been the biggest killer, say market players from the old school.Stories are already doing the rounds of investors who were bullish on silver are now in neck-deep losses. A promoter of a major restaurant in east Nagpur is learnt to have sold his business to pay up for the losses in silver, say sources in Itwari business circles. Many investors purchased silver when it was close to Rs 4 lakh a kg; the rates have halved and their funds have eroded, say veterans in Itwari, the traditional business hub of the city.Not all stories are coming out in the open, but an acute liquidity crunch in the market indicates big-ticket investors sitting on huge losses, say traders. The funds are lost or stuck up in investments whose values erode drastically. “The thinning business in various trade sectors shows that businessmen have lost money,” says Julfesh Shah, a chartered accountant.The former President of Nagpur Cloth Merchants Association, Ajay Madan, said it’s the worst fund crisis after Covid-19. Normally, payments which take a fortnight are taking nearly a couple of months. This indicates that funds are stuck up in investments whose values are down these days. Rajesh Thakker of M/s Dipti Traders, a silver wholesaling firm at Akola, said traders who have not squared off their deals have their funds stuck amid falling bullion.