A section of the market is of the view that the volatility being witnessed these days is primarily on account of brokers acting on rumours of FII buying in certain counters and subsequently building positions.

Brokers say that scrips which have seen this kind of a trend are Satyam Computers, Corporation Bank, Infosys Technology, Pentafour Software, Philips (I), Zee Telefilm, GAIL, E Merck, Indian Shaving Products, Essel Packaging, Ingersoll Rand and Britannia.

``Herd mentality is the driving force of the markets. Rumours of FII purchases at a particular counter drive the entire broking community towards that counter,'' said a BSE broker.

In fact, some brokers have gone to the extent of getting a list of FII purchases in companies ahead of others. The list is released from time totime by the Reserve Bank of India.

This allows brokers to get information on the status of FII holdings in a particular company, allowing them to warehouse shares of these companies and manipulate the stock price.

Besides the FII figures, the purchases and sales made by the local institutions like UTI, LIC, Canbank and other mutual funds are also not released by the exchanges which leads to massive speculation in counters which are institutional favourites.

``The secondary market advisory committee also highlighted the fact that there is a need for Sebi to take a view on the issue,'' said a senior Sebi official.

According to sources, Sebi has decided to take a view on the matter after discussing it with institutions and other market experts. The regulator has also sought the opinion of the stock exchanges on the same.

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) releases FII figures on a daily basis. However, no figures are available on purchases or sales made by domestic institutions. The National StockExchange (NSE), on the other hand, does not release any figures. NSE's reasoning is that the release of these figures could prove to be counter productive and thus have a negative impact on the market.

Sebi, on its part, has recently started releasing weekly updates on FII investments. Speaking on the need to release such figures, BSE president JC Parekh said: "Our exchange has been transparent in terms of releasing the FII transaction figures on a daily basis. However, the same is not easy when it comes to giving out figures on domestic institutions on a daily basis".