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Poor Q1 results, FII pressure hold indices tight; Sensex crashes 150 points, Nifty loses 36 points

Nervous trend was witnessed on both the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange due to several reasons like Asian market crises, poor performance in the first quarter of fiscal year by corporates, firing in border areas in Kashmir and sustained selling pressure from foreign institutional investors during the week ended August 7.

The BSE brokers have demanded a uniform clearing and settlement mechanism, leading brokers said and pointed out ''there is a need to look ahead and think about a common clearing and settlement mechanism for all stock exchanges on lines of Euroclear. This is a lesson to be learnt from the recent problems of payment on bourses.''

National Securities Depository Limited has crossed Rs 500 billion mark.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) crashed by 149.06 points to 3062.25 points as compared to last week's close of 3211.31 points. The broad-based BSE National Index decreased to 1364.85 points suffering a net loss of Rs 51.82 points over the previous week's close of 1416.67 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices finished at 315.85 and 123.58 points as compared to previous week's close of 324.54 and 126.96 points losing 08.70 and 03.38 points respectively.

The total turnover on the BSE during the week was Rs 40.95 billion. The sops announced by Commerce Minister Ramakrishna Hegde to boost the exports, including reduction in pre- and post-shipment export credit rate by two per cent to nine per cent from 11 per cent, failed to improve the sentiment of investors.

The crises in the Asian market and demand for the devaluation of world major currency which demoralised the sentiment of FIIs to invest in the Indian capital markets and started selling index-based shares.

On the contrary, the domestic institutions including Unit Trust of India, General Insurance Corporation and Life Insurance Corporation of India coupled with other mutual funds continued to invest in the capital market which halted the heavy downfall in the exchanges, leading brokers said.

About six refineries companies have shown worst-ever performance during first quarter of the fiscal year.

ITC's net rose 18 per cent to Rs 1.7 billion. Hindustan Lever's net rose 28.2 per cent to Rs 46.62 billion.

The fall in Dow Jones Index and the Shiromani Akali Dal's (Badal) threat to withdraw support from the Vajpayee government if their demand for excluding Udham Singh Nagar from Uttarakhand does not meet, has also aided to the downfall in the share prices.

The S&P CNX Nifty Index closed at 895.55 points suffering a loss of 35.85 points as against the previous week's close of 931.40 points. S&P CNX Defty came down by 30.30 points to 728.40 points over the previous week's close of 758.70 points.

S&P CNX 500 index closed at 606.66 points losing 15.04 points as compared to last week's close of 621.70 points and CNX Midcap 200 index finished at 522.95 points as against the previous week's close of 524.15 points.

However, CNX Nifty Junior rose by 13.65 points to 1464.10 points over the previous week's close of 1450.45 points. The total turnover on NSE during the week was Rs 54.94 billion.

UNI