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BSE recovers!

Share prices rose moderately on good buying support from some local as well as foreign institutions at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The market went up by a considerable 36 points as local operators rushed to buy new stocks. Since the credit policy by the Reserve Bank of India failed to even cause a ripple in the market, the buying support from FIIs like the Indian Tobacco Company steadied yesterday's downfall. Adequate support from the Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation and General Insurance Corporation helped the pivotals regain its slag partially.

Reflecting the activity, the BSE sensex opened marginally higher at 3,970.50 points and steadied at 4,015.64 points during the day. It reported the day's low of 3,926.36 points before finally closing at 4,006.81, showing a 36.53-point gain against the previous close of 3970.28 points.

The BSE-100 ended at 1,760.96 points after opening at 1,742.85 points and fluctuating between the day's high of 1,763.01 and low of 1,722.84 points, thus showing a gain of 17.40 points.

The BSE-200 closed higher at 398.30 points, gaining a marginal 3.97 points against yesterday's close of 394.33 points.

The dollex closed at 166.91 points, 1.75 points ahead of its previous close of 165.16 points.

Marketmen said the FIIs entered the market and picked up some blue chip stocks. The UTI's buying was aggressive at the fundamentally strong counters, they said.

The BSE has decided to shift the equity shares of 347 companies from non-specified securities (b2) group to non-specified (b1) group with effect from Monday, May 4, 1998.

The total turnover on the BSE reported during the day was Rs 11.32 billion. Fiftythree million shares changed hands. The total number of trades stood at 130,544. Of the 7,023 listed scrips, 1,683 were traded, a BSE release said.

The ITC stood first in the list of turnover by registering Rs 2.55 billion, followed by market leader Reliance (Rs 1.20 billion), Tata Tea (Rs 559.4 million), State Bank of India (Rs 555 million), Satyam Comp (Rs 410.1 million), ACC (Rs 379.6 million), Pentafour (Rs 371.8 million), Castrol Ind (Rs 352 million), Zee Telefilm (Rs 221.4 million), Telco (Rs 182.6 million), BPL (Rs 167.5 million), Tisco (Rs 167.4 million), ICICI Ltd (Rs 150.8 million) and Sterlite (Rs 150.6 million).

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters in b1 group like Cipla Ltd, Ipca Labs, VSNL, Bausch and Lomb, Rel Pet, Blue Star, Thiru Aroora, Tata Infotec, Max India, Him Fut Comm, DSQ Software, BFL Soft, Kec Enter, Krishna Fila and Hoech Mar.

UNI