After a gap of more than three years, traders on Dalal Street have once

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again started hating the closing bell. The reason: closing bell stops the upward movement of the market.

On Monday they hated it even more because BSE Sensex could have crossed the 20,000 mark on the day had the closing bell came a bit late. Closing bells on both the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) rings at 3.30 pm.

On Monday, when the bell rang, Sensex was at 19,906.10, or 93.90 points short of the psychological 20,000 mark, and Nifty was trading at 5,981, just 19 points short of 6,000.

But what the closing bell stopped from happening on Monday, the opening bell will do on Tuesday. The logic behind our call for an opening bell above 20,000 is the strength visible in international markets and the fact that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are rediscovering the India growth story. Provisional figures for Monday show FIIs were net buyers by Rs 1,700 crore, specially in large-cap stocks. This is in addition to the more than Rs 6,000 crore they have pumped into Indian equities during the past few trading sessions.

What will add fuel to the fire is the bullish international market. At the time of going to press, Dow Jones Industrial Average was trading 100 points up while Nasdaq had added 22 points.

If the US market ends Monday on a firm note, which is likely, than a strong opening in Asian markets is certain. Since Asian markets, except India, did not gain sharply on Monday, they have a lot to catch up when they open for trade on Tuesday because they mirror the US market as most of them are export-led economies dependent on the US.

Moreover, in the past two weeks the Indian market has outperformed its Asian peers. On days when the rest of Asia is down, India stocks have notched decent gains.

Given these conditions, it is very likely that the first trade on our bourses will take Sensex and Nifty above 20,000 and 6,000 points, respectively.

What is strange but true is that the higher Sensex goes, greater participation comes from retail investors. So the big question is will domestic institutional investors (DIIs) rein in selling when Sensex crosses 20,000. DIIs have been net sellers in the past seven sessions when indices have gained one per cent on average a day.

The problem with DIIs is that even if the fund manger is bullish and wants to buy stocks, he is forced to sell in order to meet the redemption requirements. So, on a macro level, retail investors are the real drivers behind DIIs in the market.

Even though crossing 20,000 will be a major event, it will lead to more questions than answers because it is only FIIs who seem to have made money in the Indian market as most Indians have been waiting for a correction. And that correction will come when everyone stops expecting it.