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Sensex loses 56 points, dives through 3200 mark

Share prices continued to slide on the Bombay Stock Exchange following heavy speculative selling by bull operators and foreign institutional investors as the impact of the fall in Japan and other Asian markets continued to dampen sentiments on the BSE pushing down the Sensex by 56 points today.

The bulls unloaded heavily at the pivotal counters like SBI, Tisco, Reliance and MTNL. Domestic institutions made purchases in select scrips, but it could not stop the downtrend, brokers said.

The Asian market reacted sharply to the possible review of Japanese debt by Moody's rating services and share prices continued to fall the second day today.

Reflecting the low sentiment, the BSE Sensex opened lower at 3200.66 points, after touching the high of 3231.50, fell to the day's low of 3157.30 and closed at 3171.30, showing a net loss of 56.22 points.

The BSE-100 Index fell down by 22.30 points to 1396.85 points as against 1419.15 points the previous day. The BSE-200 index also came down by 4.32 points to 319.80 points while the Dollex Index decreased by 1.81 points to 125.19 points.

The subdued sentiment continued in the market throughout the week and the Sensex has altogether crashed by 299.50 points in this week from 3470.80 points last weekend to 3171.30 today.

The total turnover, involving 43 million shares of 1442 companies in 122,390 trades was Rs 9.95 billion.

Satyam Computers registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.03 billion, followed by ITC (Rs 1.52 billion, SBI (Rs 937.5 million), Reliance (Rs 678.4 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 645.6 million), Tata Tea (Rs 308.1 million), Tisco (Rs 249.5 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 242.4 million), Telco (Rs 217.2 million), Castrol (Rs 200.4 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 167.9 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 162.2 million), BHEL (Rs 160.6 million), L&T (Rs 160.1 million) and Hindustan Lever (Rs 148.1 million).

ACC declined by Rs 6.75 to Rs 1238.50, Ashok Leyland by Rs 2.10 to Rs 29.75, Bajaj Auto Rs 5 to Rs 631, BHEL Rs 8.70 to Rs 219.30, BSES Rs 4.40 to Rs 142, Castrol Rs 13.25 to Rs 527.25, Colgate Rs 5 to Rs 253, HDFC Bank Rs 1.35 to Rs 62, Hindustan Lever Rs 3.50 to Rs 1644.75, ITC Rs 13.22 to Rs 639, Reliance Rs 2,80 to Rs 133.70, Tata Chem Rs 7.30 to Rs 110.40, and Tata Tea Rs 8.30 to Rs 274.50.

However, Asian Paints gained Rs 7 to Rs 279.90, LML Rs 1.10 to Rs 80.35, Pond's India Rs 3 to Rs 1211, State Bank Rs 2 to Rs 202, and Zee Telefilms Rs 16.25 to Rs 517.75.

UNI