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Prices react moderately; Sensex down, 3096.33

Equity prices reacted moderately, dropping Sensex by 37.09 points following uncertain political situation at the Centre and absence of market players on the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The market opened on buying spree and improved the pivotals prices on continuous purchasing by the domestic institutions. But, in the afternoon, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) threatened to withdraw its support to the Vajpayee government at the Centre if its demand for exclusion of Udhamsingh Nagar district from the proposed Uttaranchal state was not met. This hampered the sentiment of investors which reflected in the capital market, leading brokers said.

Resuming on weak note, the BSE Sensitive Index opened nearly steady at 3131.54 points, on good support from FIs/MFs; it gradually went up to 3163.28 points, later came down to below 3100 mark to close at 3096.33 points suffering a net loss of 37.09 points as against the previous close of 3133.42 points.

The domestic institutions coupled with mutual funds including Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India and General Insurance Corporation of India continued their support to capital market that is why the market halted with moderate decrease, brokers added.

The broadbased BSE national index also declined by 12.26 points to 1374.46 points over the yesterday's close of 1386.72 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices came down marginally by 01.79 and 0.76 points to 317.44 and 124.38 points as compared to last working day's close of 319.23 and 125.14 points respectively.

Tumbling Asian stocks especially Hong Kong stocks during the afternoon session also overshadowed in the Indian bourses, they said and added that foreign investors were near neutral overall trading session. The export-oriented blue chips were also down, as Sony's sharp slides on the news of penalty payment to the US by the Securities and Exchange Commission spread negative sentiment to other major exporters, in overseas market, traders said.

The Nikkei 225 index has lost by 503 points or 3.1 per cent during the last one week.

The rumour about trouble spread in the metropolis following tabling of Srikrishna Report and cautioned the investors during the last session of trading, traders added.

On the contrary, the volume of the business on the screen-based trading system was increased to Rs 9.65 billion as against yesterday's close of Rs 7.73 billion involving 34.8 million shares in 115,304 trades.

ITC continued with highest turnover of Rs 2.69 billion followed by Satyam Computers Rs 1..24 billion, Zee Telefilms Rs 723.3 million, Tata Tea Rs 646.5 million, SBI Rs 533.8 million, Pentafour Software Rs 495.8 million, Reliance Rs 431.7 million, Telco Rs 280 million, Castrol India Rs 143.4 million, BHEL Rs 142.4 million, Tisco Rs 132.2 million, MTNL Rs 121.4 million, ACC Rs 116.4 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 113.5 million and Dr Reddy's Rs 97.7 million in specified counters.

A good transaction was observed at Bausch and Lomb (Rs 14.6 million), Bata India (Rs 11.2 cr), BFL Software (Rs 9.7 million), Mico (Rs 8.7 million), Silverline Industries (Rs 8.4 million) and HCL Infosys (Rs 7.6 million) at 'B1' counters.

UNI