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Sensex crashes 77 points

The nuclear-tests conducted by India yesterday affected market sentiments badly on the BSE as share prices declined sharply on the country's premier bourse today, pushing down the Sensex by over 75 points due to heavy selling pressure by foreign institutional investors and speculators across the board.

Reflecting the bearish phase, the BSE Sensex opened at 4007.43, the day's high, fell below the psychological barrier of 4000 mark to touch the day's low of 3917.90 points, and finally ended at 3945.13 points, suffering a net loss of 77.07 points as against the previous close of 4022.20 points.

Software shares were the major losers, while prominent scrips like Hind Lever, ACC, State Bank, Reliance, and Telco also suffered badly during the course of trading.

The market would have gone down further, however, had not the domestic institutional investors entered the market and supported it, leading stock brokers said.

Commenting on the weak spell of trading, BSE president J C Parekh said, "This is an initial reaction from the market participants, fearing a freeze on financial aid by European countries and some sanctions by the United States. But the market will pick up soon," he said.

The BSE president, however admitted, that if the US imposes some sanctions on India, the inflow of investment and funds will be restricted which automatically will affect market sentiments in Bombay.

A similar trend was noticed on the National Stock Exchange during the day and pivotals registered decline due to speculative selling pressure at the leading counters, marketmen said.

On the BSE, the broadbased BSE-100 index fell by 31.98 points to 1739.34 points as against the previous close of 1771.32 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 7.48 and 3.13 points to 393.88 and 164.85 points as against the previous close of 401.36 and 167.98 points respectively.

The market opened after a gap of three day's holiday including the weekly holidays of Saturday and Sunday, and Buddha Poornima on Monday.

Trading on the BSE started late at 1245 hours due to some technical problems and ended at 1610 hours.

The total turnover reported on the BSE during the day was Rs 8.5 billion. Out of 7,012 listed scrips 1,072 were traded, 34 million shares changed hands during the course of trading and the number of trades reported were 80,949.

Tobacco giant ITC topped the list of turnover by registering highest business volume of Rs 2.5 billion, followed by State Bank of India Rs 600.2 million, Tata Tea Rs 440.3 million, Pentafour Software Rs 347.8 million, Satyam Comp Rs 332.4 million, Reliance Rs 266.5 million, Hind Lever Rs 246.9 million, ACC Rs 215.6 million, Videocon Rs 204.9 million, ICICI Rs 184.7 million, L and T Rs 184.9 million, Castrol Rs 174 million, Zee Rs 143.4 million, Hindalco Rs 131.5 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 98.2 million.

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters in B1 group like Toheal Pharm, Sawaca Finan, Infotech Ent, Ciba Special, Morgan Stan, Guj Min Devil, Advanced Mic, Globes Stocks, Ace Soft, Regency Spin, Nouveau Fina, Orient Crew, Rain Cal and Lec Software.

UNI