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Nominal buying makes trading lacklustre; Sensex slips one point, 2811.44

The new trading cycle opened on a lacklustre note as the Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange lost marginal ground on nominal participation by domestic institutions and foreign institutional investors today.

No enthusiasm was shown at any counters by the local operators and the FIIs alike as there was only nominal buying support by the Unit Trust of India on counters of Indian companies like Castrol India and VSNL, while the FIIs came late in the day to add a touch of lower level buying, leading BSE brokers said.

Despite the nominal transactions which took place, there was no major activity witnessed as neither the recent announcement of the credit policy by the Reserve Bank of India nor the package announced by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee boosted the market sentiment in any way.

''The public is just not interested and has not extended any encouragement to the market,'' a broker said.

Reflecting the downtrend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensitive Index opened at 2820.23 points, touched the day's high of 2822.29 points, fell to touch the day's low of 2774.11 points and closed at a lower rate of 2811.44 points to record a net loss of 1.05 points, over the previous close of 2812.49 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also declined by 1.35 points to 1259.43 points from the previous close of 1260.78 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 0.53 and 0.02 points to 293.20 and 115.40 points from the previous close of 293.73 and 115.42 points respectively.

The total turnover on the BSE's network reported during the day was Rs 9.33 billion.

ITC stood first in the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.30 billion, Satyam Computers Rs 1.27 billion, SBI Rs 982.2 million, Zee Telefilms Rs 687.4 million, Pentafour Software Rs 481.8 million, Castrol India Rs 321.1 million and MTNL Rs 221.8 million.

Other actively traded counters were Tata Tea (Rs 150.9 million), Telco (Rs 143.6 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 115.4 million), Infosys Technology (Rs 96.1 million), ACC (Rs 94.1 million), Raymond (Rs 85.3 million) and Digital Equipment (Rs 75.3 million).

Other actively traded scrips at 'B1' counter are HCL Infosys (Rs 44.7 million), Tata Infotec (Rs 26.6 million), Indian Alum (Rs 21.5 million), VSNL (Rs 18 million), BFL Software (Rs 14.3 million), DSQ Software (Rs 10.2 million), Bata India (Rs 9 million), Rolta (Rs 8.5 million), Astra IDL (Rs 7.8 million), Vikas WSP (Rs 5.9 million), Silverline Industries (Rs 4.9 million), Software Solutions (Rs 4.8 million), Amara Raja Batteries (Rs 3.7 million), Hoecst Mar Ro (Rs 3.3 million), Bausch & Lomb (Rs 3.3 million).

UNI

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