However, a closer look reveals that overall, the market refused to slide down on Wednesday. For the first time in the past five trading sessions, the index has closed higher than the opening. Not only that, but during the intra day trading, it rose higher than the previous closing. The range overlapped over the previous day's range.

The Sensex opened 36 points lower at 2935. It touched a high of 2990, which was in any case lower than the previous high of 3008. Even the low for the day at 2924 was lower than the previous low of 2966. It is important to note that the index closed 16 points higher than opening at 2935.

Coming to individual scrips, many scrips have been establishing their bottoms for the past three or more sessions. And they are now not only going down, but trying to inch up.

HLL is prominent among this and ITC and HPCL are the other twoheavy weights. A further strengthening in these counters should now buoy the Sensex up.

And IPCL has been steadily improving for some time. Indian Hotels has become vibrant. Larsen and Toubro and Mahindra & Mahindra too are primed to move up. Ranbaxy is another strong scrip waiting to join the race upwards. BSES too has its technical indicators indicating buy for short term traders. Glaxo is not that strong and Colgate continues to threaten to move down further.

That the market has behaved the way it has on Wednesday amidst the continuing South East Asian turmoil is proof that it has already shed most of the fat that it can. Yet Jayalalitha is to consult her party colleagues about continuing support to BJP on Thursday. If she precipitates a political crisis, that could provide the panic bottom, which the market has not seen yet!

However, going by pure technicals, the daily stochastic indicator is at 6.01 and has just cut through upwards its trigger line, which is at 5.6.