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Sensex likely to plumb the deepest depths; down 20 points, 2950.80

The turmoil in Asian markets further dampened the market sentiments on the Bombay Stock Exchange with the BSE Sensex declining further by 20 points on speculative selling pressure by foreign institutional investors and operators.

The domestic institutional investors like Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India and General Insurance Corporation of India extended buying support to arrest the downward trend and succeeded to some extent.

Most of the big players have postponed their long-term commitments in view of political uncertainty over the Cauvery river water sharing dispute and doubts over the fate of the Union government.

Reflecting the bearish phase, the 30-scrip BSE Sensitive Index opened at 2935.74 points, touched the day's high of 2989.92, low of 2924.24 points and finally ended at 2950.80 points, showing a net loss of 19.84 points against the previous close of 2970.64 points. The Sensex has lost nearly 111 points during last three straight sessions.

The ongoing slide in Asian stock and currency markets already hampered the trading activity in both forex and stock market in India. The rupee sank to an all-time low of Rs 43.35 against American greenback. Thanks to the Reserve Bank of India which intervened thrice in a day to arrest the fall of rupee value, it finally closed at Rs 42.95/43.05.

Asian Emerging Markets head Samir Arora attributed the depressed trend in the Indian markets to the ongoing weak trend in the Asian market. Arora, however, expressed confidence in Indian economy and industry. He said that despite the slowdown the pharmaceutical, infotech, consumer giant companies exhibited strong performance during the first quarter of the financial year.

Meanwhile, the broad-based BSE-100 index declined by 11.48 points to 1319.31 points against the previous close of 1330.79.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 3.02 and 1.81 points to 306.16 and 118.71 points against the previous close of 309.18 and 120.52 points respectively.

Commenting on the trading, local brokers said that the market could not fall further despite the major fall in rupee value in view of short-covering by operators and considerable buying support from domestic institutional investors.

The total turnover in the screen-based bolt system, involving 34.8 million shares of 1268 companies in 104,619 trades, stood at Rs 9.12 billion.

Tobacco giant ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.08 billion, followed by Zee Telefilms Rs 571.3 million, SBI Rs 552 million, Infosys Tech Rs 473.9 million, Pentafour Software Rs 393.9 million, Reliance Rs 389.3 million, Tata Tea Rs 279.2 million, Dr Reddy's Rs 232.3 million, MTNL Rs 174 million, ACC Rs 169.7 million, Telco Rs 144.2 million, Castrol India Rs 138.1 million, BR Indus Rs 103.3 million and Tisco Rs 98.3 million.

Among the losers was ACC which lost by Rs 51.25 to sell at Rs 1101.25. Others losers were: BHEL by Re 1 to Rs 209.90, Colgate by Rs 5.90 to Rs 206.70, Hindustan Lever by Rs 3.20 to Rs 1619.50, L&T by Rs 3.40 to Rs 180.10, NIIT by Rs 19.25 to Rs 1519.75, Reliance by Rs 2.50 to Rs 122, SBI by Rs 4.70 to Rs 190.30, Tisco dropped by Rs 3 to Rs 93.50.

Among the gainers were Asian paints gained smartly by Rs 11.90 to Rs 291.20, ITC up by Rs 0.50 to Rs 574, M&M by Rs 0.80 to Rs 139.80 and Telco looked up by Rs 0.80 to Rs 132.80.

UNI