COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

UTI, LIC stop Sensex from crashing; 3062.25

Equity prices reacted further following several reasons including Asian economic turmoil, uncertain political situation and selling pressure from foreign institutional investors on the last day of settlement at Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The World Bank said that India's high fiscal deficit threatened its macro-economic stability and hindered financial sector reforms.

The World Bank also said in a report that India now faced a more difficult environment and a possible further slowdown in investment, which cautioned the FIIs from investing in the Indian bourses, the marketmen said.

The continuous slide in both share and currency in the Asian markets made the FIIs nervous to invest in the capital market and hence they sold considerable amount of index-based shares, leading brokers said.

Reflecting downtrend, the BSE Sensitive Index opened lower at 3094.17 points, touched day's high of 3104.87 points before closing at 3062.25 points, suffering a loss of 34.08 points as against the previous close of 3096.33 points.

The broad-based BSE National Index also fell to 1364.85 points over yesterday's close of 1374.46 points, losing 09.61 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices finished at 315.84 and 123.58 points as compared to last trading day's close of 317.44 and 124.38 points respectively.

The domestic institutions particularly Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India, General Insurance Corporation of India coupled with mutual funds continued their buying support, which arrested heavy downfall in the equity prices, they added.

Top losers were Hindustan Lever declined by Rs 14.75 to Rs 1630, ITC came down by Rs 4.5 to Rs 590, ACC by Rs 1.30 to Rs 1255, Reliance Industries eased by Rs 0.50 to Rs 130. However, Satyam Computers rose by Rs 4.75 to Rs 490 and improved by Rs 4 to Rs 144.

The total turnover on the screen-based trading was Rs 8.76 billion involving 33.3 million shares in 99,141 trades.

ITC registered highest turnover of Rs 1.68 billion followed by Satyam Computers Rs 1.53 billion, Zee Telefilms Rs 760.2 million, SBI Rs 466 million, Reliance Rs 453.3 million, Tata Tea Rs 408.2 million, Infosys Tech Rs 381.4 million, Dr Reddy's Rs 320.1 million, Pentafour Software Rs 281.7 million, Telco Rs 260.2 million, Castrol India Rs 170.3 million, MTNL Rs 161.5 million, Hindustan Lever Rs 124.5 million, L&T Rs 105.4 million and ACC Rs 93.5 million in specified counters.

A good transaction was observed at BFL Software (Rs 18.1 million), Bata India (Rs 15 million), Himachal Futuristic (Rs 14.1 million), Software Solution (Rs 13.5 million), Wipro (Rs 8.8 million), Silverline Industries (Rs 8.6 million) and Bausch and Lomb (Rs 7 million) at 'B1' counters.

UNI