Second, these blue chips coming into the limelight might mean that the market is sensing a revival of their fortune. While it might be too early to see a turnaround, at least the worst is over for the blue chips. Alongwith rising prices, these industry leaders have witnessed a sharp rise in their trading volumes. So much so, most of them are back on top of the trading volumes table, pushing the software scrips lower in the order. Over the last six trading sessions, Reliance, SBI and Telco have topped the trading volumes on the Bombay Stock Exchange consistently. Satyam Computer, which till recently, used to bethe top scrip in terms of volumes has been pushed to the fifth position.

Says Milind Karmakar of Dalal and Broacha, ``Definitely, there has been a shift in volumes, primarily for two reasons. One, the traditional sectors had been hammered to ridiculously low levels. Since these sectors are linked to the economy, anybody who is betting at the revival is shifting to these stocks. This is primarily the reason behind the rise in scrips like Telco and ACC.''

Besides, IT scrips are already trading at a PE of 50/60 and may be, the market feels that there will not be any further growth in the sector, he adds.

In terms of turnover, Satyam Computer and ITC continue to top the table. This is because of their high price compared to the hammering of the traditional blue chips over the last few months. But a rising trend in the prices of these blue chips accompanied by a substantial rise in trading volumes could be a pointer to the shape of things to come. In last few trading sessions, as much as 4.84 crore sharesof RIL have been traded. The scrip has zoomed from Rs 103 to the Rs 123.4 level. These blue chips were trading at very attractive valuations as most of these scrips had hit their bottoms recently. Reliance Industries fell to as low as Rs 99 while Tisco dropped to Rs 86. According an analyst with leading brokerage house, ``With the government taking pains to revive the economy these companies, which are mostly leaders in their fields, are the horses to bet on. Moreover, future growth of software companies once the Y2K boom is over is likely to be limited.''

Most of these companies have performed badly for the first half of current fiscal which had depressed the stock prices. However as these companies are taking steps to improve their performance with help from the government (it recently announced a economic package to revive the economy), it could mean that the second half is unlikely to be as bad. Thus worst seem to be over for these companies. According a broker, ``The dismal performance by thesecompanies has considerably eroded their bottomline and thus, even a meagre rise in profitability in absolute figures will translate into a substantial jump in percentage terms.''