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Sensex greets Budget with steep fall

Despite the various announcements for the seconday market, the first ever Budget presented by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha received a cold response on the country's premier bourse. Leading BSE brokers attributed the subdued trend to the general disappointment among the marketmen for not considering the buy-back share scheme.

Nikhil Vakharia of Kanchanlal and Sons said, "Overall, the Budget is good, and it did not have as much impact as the nuclear tests conducted by India (had on the market)." Vakharia hoped that the market will stabilise very soon.

However, BSE president J C Parekh was of the view that there are not many sops for capital market in the general budget and hence the market reacted negatively.

Refleting the mix trend, the BSE Sensitive index, which reported an handsome gain of 107.99 points over the previous close, lost the gained ground during the post-Budget trading session. The Sensex suffered a net loss of 43.71 points, ending at 3642.68 points as against Friday's close of 3642.68 points, while it was down by 151.70 points against the pre-Budget session close of 3794.38 points.

The broadbased BSE-100 index drifted lower by 16.14 points to 1628.00 against the previous close of 1644.14 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices declined by 0.63 and 0.86 points to 375.11 and 149.44 points as against the previous close of 375.44 and 150.74 points respectively.

Out of 7027 listed scrips, 1589 were traded during the course of the day. The number of trades were 211989. Total turnover on the BSE reported during both pre- and post-Budget trading was Rs 18.25 million.

Satyam Computer topped the list of business volume by registering highest turnover of Rs 2.46 billion, followed by ITC Rs 2.4 billion, Reliance Rs 2 billion, BPL Rs 940.1 million, Tisco Rs 914.3 million, L&T Rs 882.3 million, Videocon Int Rs 807.4 million, ACC Rs 688.9 million, Sterlite Rs 605.6 million, SBI Rs 535.2 million, Zee Telefilm Rs 432 million, Pentafour S Rs 420.4 million, Tata Tea Rs 417.7 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 290.3 million and Infosys Tech Rs 229.3 million.

Hectic activity was witnessed in the B1 group in the securities like BFL S oftware, Wipro, DSQ Ssoftware, Tata Infotec, HCL Infosyst, Reliance Pet, Software Sol, Him Fut Comm and Aptech.

UNI