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The story of two bulls
February 4, 2008
While the Wall Street Bull leans back giving the impression that it is about to charge, the BSE bull is a bit straighter, although it too sports exaggerated musculature, flaring nostrils and a ferocious expression.
The BSE bull stands outside the 'infamous' Gate 2, the eastern entrance of the Bombay Stock Exchange. The bull has been installed looking away from the BSE. When the stock markets crashed, superstitious brokers first said that it was bad omen and then asserted that it could be the direction of the bull that caused the meltdown.
BSE, Asia's oldest stock exchange, has for long been mired in such superstitious rows. In the mid-1980s, the BSE had to cut a tree for expansion. This coincided with a fall in the markets and brokers blamed the crash on to the cutting of the tree.
Some years later, their attention turned to the BSE's normally closed Gate 2. Brokers say that the first time the gate was opened in 1992, the Harshad Mehta scam followed. In 2001, it was reopened to welcome the then US President Bill Clinton. Soon thereafter the markets crashed. The gate had to be opened yet again to install the bull and the markets melted, only to fortify the brokers' fears further.
Image: The Wall Street Bull, or the Charging Bulll, in New York.
Photograph: Shishir Bhate
Also read: India's 10 largest IPOs
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