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Pivotals firm as Nifty gobbles up 33 points; 1004.05

Pivotals further firmed up as the upbeat sentiment continued with good buying support by bull operators on the National Stock Exchange today.

Mirroring the uptrend, the NSE-50 Index or Nifty shot up by 32.65 points to 1004.05 points from 971.40 of the previous day. The Dollar NSE-50 Index also went up by 27.10 points to 817.30 points from the previous day's 790.20 points.

The Midcap Index gained smartly by 38.40 points to 1491.45 points as compared to the previous day's 1453.05 points.

The total turnover, involving 51.37 million shares in 192,349 trades, was Rs 16.62 billion and the debenture traded value was Rs 773,000.

About 610 scrips advanced, 326 declined while 96 remained unchanged. 57 securities have hit their price bands today.

Foreign institutional investors today purchased shares for Rs 179.08 million against higher sales of Rs 277.36 million, indicating an outflow of foreign funds worth Rs 98.28 million from the market.

Tobacco giant ITC recorded the highest turnover of Rs 4.96 billion, followed by Satyam Computers (Rs 2.86 billion), SBI (Rs 1.04 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 739.4 million), Tata Tea (Rs 691.1 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs684 million), ACC (Rs 613.7 million), Castrol (Rs 532.8 million), Reliance (Rs 514.3 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 416.4 million), L&T (Rs 263.6 million), BHEL (Rs 238.5 million) and Bajaj Auto (Rs 234.5 million).

The other actively traded counters were NIIT (Rs 203.1 million), BFL Software (Rs 164.1 million), MTNL (Rs 143.8 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 137.8 million), LML (Rs 131.3 million), Telco (Rs 123.4 million), Tisco (Rs 116.8 million), BSES (Rs 95.6 million), Silverline (Rs 74.2 million), Nestle (Rs 72 million), ICICI (Rs 70.5 million) and Pond's (Rs 66.1 million).

MTNL topped the gainers list with 7.99 per cent increase to Rs 212.15, followed by Thermax with 7.93 per cent increase to Rs 178.20, BHEL 7.83 per cent to Rs 263.05, Cochin Refineries 6.76 per cent to Rs 237.70 and Asian Paints 6.48 per cent to Rs 283.50.

East India Hotels topped the losers list with 2.41 per cent loss to Rs 226.35, HDFC 1.96 per cent loss to Rs 2928.90, Grasim 1.34 per cent to Rs 286.15 , India Rayon 1.24 per cent to Rs 175.05 and GE Shipping 1.01 per cent to Rs 29.45.

The wholesale debt market of NSE witnessed trading worth Rs 2.56 billion. The 11.55 per cent government loan maturing in 2001 was traded for Rs 500 million at a weighted yield of 11.52 per cent.

The zero coupon government loan maturing in 2000 (Series III) was traded for Rs 300 million at a weighted yield of 11.15 per cent. The 14-day treasury bill maturing on July 25, 1998 was traded for Rs 60 million at a yield of 6.25 per cent. One repo trade amounting to Rs 50 million was transacted at a repo rate of 6.60 per cent for a repo term of 14 days. The turnover in debentures was Rs 408,000 today.

UNI