COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Share prices decline on selling pressure, Sensex 3344.33

Pivotals declined further on speculative selling pressure by bull operators as the political uncertainty over the Cauvery water dispute continued to affect market sentiments on the Bombay Stock Exchange for the third straight day, pushing down the Sensex marginally by 8.97 points today.

Foreign institutional investors preferred to stay away from the market while domestic institutions also took cautious approach and made limited purchases at the select counters, market sources said.

Automobile giant Bajaj Auto and Castrol suffered badly while software scrips ruled steady in the range bound trading, dealers said.

Reflecting subdued sentiment, the BSE Sensitive Index or Sensex opened higher at 3358.08, jumped to touch the day's high of 3372.75, fell to touch the day's low of 3314.59 before closing at 3344.33, losing 8.97 points against 3353.30 points the previous day.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index declined by 4.33 points to 1469.09 points from 1473.42 points the previous day. The BSE-200 Index also slid by 1.21 points to 334.69 points while the Dollex index moved down by 0.23 points to 131.45 points.

The total turnover in the BOLT system, involving 32.5 million shares of 1,364 companies in 106,014 trades was Rs 8.99 billion.

Satyam Computers registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.15 billion, followed by ITC (Rs 1.65 billion), Zee Telefilms (Rs 518 million), SBI (Rs 496.5 million), Reliance (Rs 415.2 million), Castrol Industries (Rs 413.5 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 346.1 million), Tata Tea (Rs 330.1 million), Digital Equipment (Rs 321.3 million), BHEL (Rs 172.7 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 159.1 million), Colgate (Rs 119.9 million), Telco (Rs 108.8 million), ACC (Rs 86.5 million) and L&T (Rs 78.9 million).

UNI