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FII pressure still on; Nifty slips more than 9 points, 854.55

Pivotals opened on a positive note and declined marginally towards close, on speculative selling by foreign institutional investors and bull operators on the National Stock Exchange today.

Mirroring the low sentiment, the S&P CNX Nifty Index slid by 9.55 points to 854.55 points from 864.10 points of the last working day. The S&P CNX Nifty Junior Index fell by 13 points to 1445.85 points from 1458.85 while the S&P CNX Defty dropped by 8.65 points to 685.70 from 694.35 points. The S&P CNX 500 slipped by 6.67 points to 583.99 points from 590.66 and the S&P CNX Midcap 200 index declined by 6.95 points to 508.85 points from 515.80 points.

The total turnover, involving 35.85 million shares in 140,033 trades was Rs 98.88 billion and the debentures turnover was Rs 835,000.

More than 325 securities gained, 557 declined and 85 remained unchanged. More than 30 scrips hit their price bands today.

FIIs sold shares worth Rs 154.68 million against their lower investment of Rs 69.92 million in the market, leaking the foreign investment to the tune of Rs 84.75 million from the market.

Tobacco giant ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.26 billion, followed by Satyam Computer (Rs 1.54 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 688.4 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 613.9 million), Tata Tea (Rs 518.3 million), Reliance (Rs 499 million), SBI (Rs 443.8 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 314.3 million), Castrol India (Rs 289.2 million), ACC (Rs 251 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 246.9 million), Telco (Rs 212.5 million) and Silverline (Rs 143.9 million).

The other actively traded counters were: L&T (Rs 104.3 million), BHEL (Rs 95.5 million), HCL-HP (Rs 91.7 million), MTNL (Rs 87.6 million), Dabur (Rs 76.3 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 76.1 million), BFL Software (Rs 73.6 million), Glaxo (Rs 64.7 million), NIIT (Rs 61 million), BPL (Rs 54.1 million, Colgate (Rs 50 million) and Software Solution (Rs 48.1 million).

Hindustan Hotels recorded the highest gain of 3.63 per cent to Rs 313.95, followed by East India Hotel 2.82 per cent to Rs 203.90, Ashok Leyland 2.23 per cent to Rs 27.55 per cent, IPCL 1.95 per cent to Rs 47.10 and Indo Gulf 1.28 per cent to Rs 31.55.

Gujarat Ambuja Cement suffered the highest lose of 4.95 per cent to Rs 169.10, followed by BHEL 4.33 per cent to Rs 206.35, Nestle 4.19 per cent to Rs 420.65, Tata Tea 3.51 per cent to Rs 277.75 and ICICI 3.45 per cent to Rs 71.45.

The wholesale debt market of NSE witnessed trades worth Rs 3.21 billion. The 11.55 per cent government loan maturing in 2001 was traded for Rs 950 million at a weighted yield of 11.41 per cent and the 12 per cent government stock maturing in 1999 was traded for Rs 750 million at a weighted yield of 9.35 per cent. Commercial paper issued by Larsen and Toubro, maturing on October 06, 1998 was traded for Rs 100 million at a yield of 8.75 per cent. The turnover in debenture was Rs 455,000.

UNI