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BSE tumbles, gains some ground again

Volatile trading continued on the Bombay Stock Exchange today, the first day of current settlement as the BSE sensitive fell sharply below the 3000-mark, losing over 125 points to touch an intra-day low of 2951.45. It closed at 3078.51, a fall of 64 points against the previous close, thanks to aggressive buying by the leading domestic institutional investor, the Unit Trust of India.

UTI reportedly made purchases in the index-based scrips just 20 minutes prior to the close.

Market sentiments were dampened after Moody's Investors Service downgraded the ratings. The BSE Sensex opened on a weak note at 3063.15, touched the day's high of 3097.95, before falling sharply by at least 127 points to touch day's low of 2951.45 points and later ended at 3078.51 points, showing net loss of 64.59 points against the previous close of 3143.10 points.

According to leading BSE brokers, foreign institutional investors were the net sellers during the day while there was good buying support from domestic institutions.

Scrips like ITC, Bajaj Auto and Mahindra and Mahindra reported remarkable gains towards the fag end before falling sharply due to heavy FII selling pressure. ITC closed higher by 18.50 to 612,25 before touching the day's low of Rs 577.50, Bajaj Auto recovered from the day's low of 484 to close at 527.25 gaining by Rs 9.25 over the previous close.

Reliance gained Rs 1.50 to rise to Rs 141.90. Among other prominent scrips, ACC closed lower by Rs 0.50 to Rs 1168, Hindalco declined sharply by 30 to Rs 619, L and T dropped by Rs 4.70 to Rs 216.50, State Bank of India dropped by Rs 2 to Rs 199, TISCO slipped by Rs 0.50 to Rs 122.30 while TELCO lost Rs 12.20 to settle at Rs 168.10.

The broad-based BSE-100 index declined by 30.17 points to 1341.13 against the previous close of 1371.30 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices closed lower by 6.45 and 3.93 points to settle at 306.11 and 119.38 points against the previous close of 312.56 and 123.31 points respectively.

The fall in rupee value by about 55 paise to Rs 42.72/75 against the US dollar at the Interbank foreign exchange market was also one reason for the fall in share prices, a leading BSE broker said.

Business volume on the screen-based trading system reduced sharply to Rs 5.51 billlion from Friday's total turnover of Rs 6.99 billion.

ITC topped the list, registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.05 billion, followed by Reliance (Rs 650.5 million), State Bank (Rs 473.6 million), Castrol Ind (Rs 226.3 million) and Satyam Comp (Rs 210.5 million).

Hectic activity was witnessed at the other counters like Hind Lever (Rs 172.2 million)), L and T (Rs 108.8 million)), Bajaj Auto (Rs 97.6 million), TISCO (Rs 94.4 million), Tata Tea (Rs 8.69 million), ACC (Rs 83.6 million), TELCO (Rs 73.3 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 70.8 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 60,3 million) and MTNL (Rs 57.3 million).

UNI