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Sensex drifts marginally lower, 3365.72

The imposition of additional volatility margin on select scrips by the Bombay Stock Exchange led the Sensex to drift marginally lower today.

High margins (30-40 per cent) on software and technology stocks deterred any major buying by domestic institutions and local operators.

Foreign institutional investors were active players in an otherwise dull market. According to market sources, foreign funds bought Zee Telefilms, MTNL and State Bank of India due to which the Sensex climbed smartly in the early trading.

Lack of buying interest from domestic financial institutions allowed the Sensex to fall during the later part of the day.

The BSE-30 Sensitive Index opened at 3404.87 points, rose to the day's high of 3419.36 points, low of 3348.66 points and ended at 3365.72 points, as against the previous close of 3371.50 points. The Sensex shed 5.78 points.

The rise in stock indices in major financial centres of the world aided the stable sentiments.

Brokers said that some bull operators, who had gone long on index scrips, squared up positions.

The BSE-200 index eased by 1.31 points to 1477.30 points from the previous close of 1478.61 points. BSE-200 index rose slightly by 0.29 points to 336.70 points from the last close of 336.41 points. The Dollex index also firmed by 0.14 points to 131.59 points from the previous 131.45 points.

The total turnover on the Bolt network was Rs 9.48 billion from 33.3 million trades.

Satyam Computers topped the turnover list with Rs 2.26 billion followed by ITC (Rs 1.41 billion), SBI (Rs 744.4 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 405.5 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 364.9 million), Infosys (Rs 359.4 million) and Reliance (Rs 346 million).

In the B1 group, BFL recorded a turnover of Rs 67.9 million, followed by VSNL (Rs 17.8 million), Software SOL (Rs 17.7 million), KOI (Rs 15.8 million), Silverline (Rs 15.5 million) and DSQ (Rs 12.7 million).

UNI