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Pharma shares keep up the rally; Sensex up 23 points, 2968.60

Pharma shares staged a smart rally at the Bombay Stock Exchange on good buying interest from speculators and institutional investors, resulting in a recovery by the Sensex by 23 points today.

Besides, pharma counters, engineering giant Telco was also in the limelight alongwith cement major ACC and BHEL, dealers said.

The Raymond counter also attracted speculative buying. However, it turned weak towards the end of session. Except NIIT most of the software stocks closed lower as against their previous close.

Pharma counters like Glaxo, Novartis, German Remedies were at the forefront, dealers said.

Reflecting the trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened at 2947.40 points, touched the day's high of 2973.90 points, fell to the day's low of 2947.40 before closing at 2968.60 points, showing a net gain of 23.20 points from the previous close of 2945.40 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index advanced by 11.41 points to 1323.29 points as against the previous close of 1311.88 points.

Most of the brokers have adopted a cautious approach and avoided taking big positions in view of ''the 1998 Leonid meteor storm'' which is likely to affect the satellite functioning.

The foreign institutional investors, leading domestic institutional investors, also had very limited activity, marketmen said.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices recovered by 2.87 and 1.02 points at 306.47 and 120.43 points from the previous close of 303.60 and 119.41 points respectively.

Being the last day of the settlement on the NSE, brokers were busy in squaring up their business, dealers said.

Among the gainers, ACC went up by Rs 22 to Rs 1030, BHEL to Rs 2.90 to Rs 256, Burroughs Welcome Rs 7.70 to Rs 595.25, Cadbury Rs 13.75 to Rs 399.75, Castrol Rs 3.75 to Rs 645.50, Colgate Rs 1.30 to Rs 176, Glaxo Rs 10 to Rs 564, Grasim Rs 3.40 to Rs 168, ITC Re 1 to Rs 722, L&T Rs 2.40 to Rs 154.80, Mahindra and Mahindra Rs 6.20 to Rs 170.80, NIIT Rs 17.50 to Rs 1352.75, Ranbaxy Rs 15.50 to Rs 540.25, Reliance Rs 2.10 to Rs 120.30, Satyam Computers Rs 2.50 to Rs 581, SBI Rs 1.30 to Rs 161.80, Telco earned Rs 9.40 to Rs 148.10 and Tisco Rs 1.65 to Rs 92.70.

The losers included BSES which dropped by Re 1 to Rs 156.30, Hindustan Lever Rs 6.50 to Rs 1,598 and Hindalco Rs 2.25 to Rs 543.

Total turnvoer on the screen-based BOLT system stood at Rs 9.33 billion.

ITC posted highest turnover of Rs 1.14 billion, followed by Zee Telefilms Rs 1.09 billion, Reliance Rs 1.07 billion, Telco Rs 930.9 million and Pentafour Software Rs 582.2 million.

Other actively traded scrips were SBI (Rs 529.4 million), Satyam Computer (Rs 346.9 million), ACC (Rs 29.80 crore), Raymond Wool (Rs 289.8 million), Glaxo India (Rs 161 million), Tata Tea (Rs 158.5 million), Sterlite (Rs 152.7 million), L&T (Rs 130 million), Tisco (Rs 110.7 million) and LML Limited (Rs 105.6 million).

UNI

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