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Bears loosen hug on Sensex as UTI denies offloading blue-chips

Syed Firdaus Ashraf in Bombay

The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index staged a mild recovery today, gaining 41.67 points to close at 2,919.74 points after yesterday's bear hammering had led to a crash of 224.22 points.

The National Stock Exchange S&P CNX Nifty too closed at 847.55, up 6.8 points over yesterday's close of 840.75.

In the morning, sentiment on the bourses was depressed and trading low-key. But it gathered momentum in the afternoon with the Unit Trust of India scotching rumours that it was offloading its blue-chip stocks.

This buoyed the market and demand picked up for ITC, Zee Telefilms, Hindustan Lever, Reliance, and Satyam Computers.

Bajaj Auto was the sole exception, with the counter seeing only sellers. The scrip lost heavily and at one point even set off the circuit-breaker. It finally closed at Rs 575.

But no other scrip reached the circuit-breaker. Among the big gainers were Hindustan Lever (up Rs 94.25), ITC (Rs 30), and Zee Telefilms (Rs 20). Reliance gained Re 1 while Satyam Computers gained Rs 2.

Of the other scrips which saw trading today, ACC closed at Rs 1,021.75 (Rs 1,014.25 yesterday), ABB at Rs 506.75 (Rs 489.00), Britannia Industries at Rs 694.50 (Rs 674.25), and NIIT at Rs 1,297.75 (Rs 1,277.00).

Sapna Malhotra, head of research at SSKI Securities, told Rediff On The NeT, "It seems UTI has bought over the stocks and stabilised the market. Also, I feel sentiments were weak yesterday because other factors came into play, like the threat from the Akali Dal to withdraw support to the BJP government at the Centre and the world markets falling simultaneously."

Ajit Ambani, managing director, Share Deal Financial Consultant Private Limited, agreed. "Besides these factors, the short covering of the shares which were traded in the last week stabilised the market," he pointed out.