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Downtrend continues; Sensex down 16 points, 2903.56

A downtrend continued at the Bombay Stock Exchange for the second straight day today due to lack of buying interest from foreign institutional investors and domestic institutional investors.

Besides, pharma stocks like Glaxo, German Remedies and Pfizer, there were hardly any gainers, dealers said.

The fact that today is the last day of weekly trading cycle at the National Stock Exchange and the ongoing assembly election process in four states seems to have forced the postponement of their long-term positions, a dealer at a financial institution opined. Most of the players were also busy in squaring up their long-term positions, he added.

The ongoing firm trend in the overseas markets like Japan and Hong Kong also failed to boost market sentiment here, a leading BSE broker said.

Mirroring the weak trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensitive Index opened at 2925.57 points, touched the day's high of 2936.74, fell to the day's low of 2901.44 points, before closing at 2903.56 points, showing a net loss of 16.01 points from the previous close of points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index drifted lower by 7.37 points to 1294.14 points as against the previous close of 1301.51 points.

There was bull liquidation in the market today and the FIIs as well as the Unit Trust of India did not enter the market throughout the day, leading brokers said.

The market participants are fearing to take long-term positions in view of the predictions made by some magazines about the outcome of election results in the four states, they said.

Meanwhile, according to a report, the benchmark Nikkie Index zoomed by 384.70 points to 15164.64 points at Tokyo, the Hang Seng at Hong Kong up by 337.18 to 10851.71 today.

Back home, the BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 1.31 and 0.65 points to 300.26 and 117.82 points from the previous close of 301.57 and 118.47 points respectively.

The BSE witnessed a total turnover on the BOLT system of Rs 10.53 billion.

Satyam Computers topped the list of turnover by registering the highest business volume of Rs 2.53 billion followed by ITC Rs 1.35 billion, Telco Rs 743.4 million, Pentafour Software Rs 600.2 million and SBI Rs 580.6 million.

Other actively traded counters were Reliance (Rs 573.2 million), Castrol (Rs 541.4 million), Glaxo (Rs 296.5 million), MTNL (Rs 293.5 million), ACC (Rs 225.5 million), Tisco (Rs 191.1 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 166.6 million), Tata Tea (Rs 131 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 123.1 million) and L&T (Rs 107.8 million).

Among the index-based scrips ACC declined by Rs 22.75 to Rs 972, BHEL Rs 6.60 to Rs 250, BSES Rs 1.60 to Rs 149.80, Castrol dropped by Rs 7.50 to Rs 644, Dr Reddy's Rs 3.25 to Rs 433.75, Grasim Rs 5.80 to Rs 151.90, Hindustan Lever Rs 12 to Rs 1597, Hindalco Rs 12.75 to Rs 529.50, Indian Hotels Rs 2 to Rs 431, ITC Rs 1.75 to Rs 700.75, MTNL Rs 2.80 to Rs 178.90, NIIT Rs 1 to Rs 1374, Telco 30 paise down to Rs 131.30.

The gainers included Asian Hotels which gained by 70 paise to Rs 149.20, Bajaj Auto Rs 3.25 to Rs 555.75, German Remedies Rs 9.50 to Rs 577.75, Infosys Tech Rs 1.75 to Rs 236.50, Pentfour Software Rs 1.75 to Rs 548 and Tisco Rs 0.50 to Rs 92.50.

The petrochem major Reliance closed steady at Rs 117.50.

UNI

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