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Downtrend unabated, Sensex down 22 points, 2881.69

Pivotals declined further following speculative selling pressure coupled with lack of buying support from foreign institutional investors and domestic players in a lacklusture trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

Reflecting the trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened at 2900.36 points (day's high), fell to the day's low of 2874.17 points, before closing at 2881.69 points, showing a net loss of 21.87 points from the previous close of 2903.56 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index dropped by 9.62 points to 1284.52 points as against the previous close of 1294.14 points.

The Sensex has lost nearly 60 points during the last three straight trading sessions.

According to leading BSE brokers, the marketmen are awaiting the Securties and Exchange Board of India's announcements towards the short-sale and margins. ''We are positively thinking that the SEBI would restrain short sale at some extent by increasing margins,'' an analyst said.

Cement giant ACC, Satyam Computer and Glaxo emerged as major losers while pharma stocks remained more or less steady, marketmen said.

According to a report, the major stock markets in the world too reported a weak trend today.

The benchmark 225-issue Nikkei Index at Tokyo dropped by 19.17 points to 15073.47 points, the FTSE-100 index at London eased by 7.02 points at 5791.10 points while the hang-seng index at hong kong down by 130.72 points to 10720.99 points from the previous close.

Back home, the BSe-200 and Dollex indices drifted lower by 2.00 and 0.76 points to 298.26 and 117.06 points from the previous close of 300.26 and 117.82 points respectively.

Among the issues, Asian Hotels gained by Rs 1.80 to Rs 151, Hindustan Lever Rs 14.75 to Rs 1610, NIIT by 50 paise to Rs 1394.

The losers included ACC which closed lower by Rs 18 to Rs 954, Bajaj Auto Rs 11.25 to Rs 544.50, BHEl Rs 4.70 to Rs 244.40, Dr Reddy's Rs 7.25 to Rs 416.50, Glaxo Rs 13.25 to Rs 564.50, Grasim Rs 2.80 to Rs 149.10, Hindalco Rs 12.50 to Rs 517, India Hotels down by Re 1 to Rs 432, ITC Rs 4.20 to Rs 696.25, L&T Rs 2 to Rs 150, Mahindra and Mahindra Rs 4.20 to Rs 158.50, Pentafour Software Rs 1.25 to Rs 546.75, Reliance Rs 1.80 to Rs 115.70, Satyam Computers Rs 4.50 to Rs 564, State Bank of India Rs 1.80 to Rs 155.20, Telco 70 paise to Rs 130.60 and Tisco Rs 2.30 to Rrs 90.20.

The FIIs were net sellers on the BSE and reported net sales of Rs 10 million. The domestic institutional investors and mutual funds were net buyers by registering net buying worth Rs 20 million.

The total turnover on the BOLT system at the BSE dropped significantly to Rs 7.06 billion from yesterday's turnover of Rs 10.53 billion.

Satyam Computers topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 1.14 billion, followed by ITC Rs 664.7 million, Reliance Rs 538.1 million, SBI Rs 472.9 million and Telco Rs 384.5 million.

Other actively traded counters were Zee Telefilms (Rs 380.9 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 366.5 million), Castrol (Rs 263.2 million), Glaxo (Rs 210.9 million), Tisco (Rs 174.9 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 157.2 million), ACC (Rs 100 million), Tata Tea (Rs 90.9 million), NIIT (Rs 77.5 million) and MTNL (Rs 66.4 million).

UNI

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