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Marginal recovery marks settlement's last day; Sensex up 20 points, 2916.66

Equities recovered marginally at the Bombay Stock Exchange following buying support from foreign institutional investors and domestic institutional investors, on the last day of current settlement today.

The market opened on a better note, the bears tried to take control by resorting to selling in the prime counters, but with the bulls returning to the market late afternoon trade, pivotals closed higher from the previous levels, leading BSE brokers said.

Reports of firm opening at Hongkong Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange also aided the trend.

FIIs made purchases in the index-based scrips and reportedly sold at the infotech counters, mainly NIIT and Infosys Technologies.

The Unit Trust of India was at the forefront among the domestic institutional investors, but was not very aggressive, they said. Being the last day of settlement, most of the operators were busy squaring up their positions, marketmen said.

Mirroring the trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensitive Index opened at 2916.34 points, touched the day's high of 2960.82, fell to touch day's low of 2885.67 points and finally ended at 2916.66 points, showing a net gain of 20.52 points from the previous close of 2896.14 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index rose by 5.54 points at 1301.05 points from the previous close of 1295.51 points.

According to market sources, London's FTSE Index recovered at least 50 points immediately after the opening while the Hongkong Hang Seng rallied by 567.28 points or 7.15 per cent to 8506.79 today.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed higher by 1.29 and 0.54 points to 304.24 and 119.58 points from the previous close of 302.95 and 119.04 points respectively.

Among the issues, ITC gained by Rs 23.25 to Rs 709, Sataym Computers rose by Rs 21.75 to Rs 594.25, Pentafour Software added Rs 14.50 to Rs 662.25, Reliance Rs 2.20 to Rs 110, Castrol Rs 30 to Rs 580.25, Infosys Technologies Rs 25.50 to Rs 2321.00, MTNL Rs 3.80 to Rs 190.80, Zee Telefilms Rs 57.25 to Rs 669.25.

Among the losers, NIIT dropped by Rs 25 to Rs 1285.50, Dr Reddy's Rs 1.75 to Rs 511 and BHEL Rs 3.70 to Rs 241.50.

Total turnover on the BOLT network of the BSE sharply reduced at Rs 13.81 billion from yesterday's turnover of Rs 16.05 billion. Satyam Computers topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 2.51 billion, followed by Zee Telefilms Rs 2.43 billion, Reliance Rs 1.13 billion, State Bank Rs 1.01 billion and Pentafour Software Rs 645.9 million.

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters led by Hindustan Lever (Rs 395.2 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 321.4 million), NIIT (Rs 208.1 million), Castrol India (Rs 199.2 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 197.6 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 189.7 million), ACC (Rs 171.1 million), BHEL (Rs 168.8 million) and L&T (Rs 152.9 million).

UNI