COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Fears of poor H1 results spread: Reliance goes under Rs 100; Sensex under 2800

Bear hammering of pivotals by foreign funds led the Sensex, the key index of the Bombay Stock Exchange to tumble by 89 points today.

The BSE-30 Sensitive Index plummeted to 2764.16 as against the previous close of 2853.27. The Sensex opened at 2845.86, which happened to be its high today. The The day's low was 2753.34.

According to marketmen, foreign institutional investors offloaded substantial quantity in scrips like Reliance, Telco, Tisco, Satyam Computers and ACC. ''Sellers dominated today's market. Domestic institutions, who normally buy in such situations, had a nominal presence,'' informed a broker.

Kotak Securities' head of research Rajshekhar Iyer said that the downtrend in the Telco scrip is on account of the market factoring the likely poor performance of the commercial vehicles major during the first quarter of the financial year 1998-99. The Reliance scrip, which has been a favourite of the retail investor so far, fell below the Rs 100 mark today.

''Reliance is basically in the global commodities business. It is quite natural that the global recession and glut in the commodity trade had affected the company's fortunes. Reliance has large volumes. Therefore, its profits don't take a beating. However, the market recognises these fundamental factors that may affect the company's fortunes in the future,'' Iyer said.

Reliance, which ruled at the Rs 107 levels on the 'moorat trading' yesterday, fell to Rs 99. ACC fell by around Rs 60 to Rs 868, while Telco declined by Rs 6 to end at Rs 93.55.

Reflecting the bearish trend, the BSE-100 index ended lower by 37.70 points at 1234.61. The BSE-200 index drifted by 8.66 points to end at 288.53, while the Dollex closed at 113.56, showing a net loss of 3.44 points.

According to analysts, from the fundamental point of view, the market is seriously discounting the expected quarterly results of corporates. ''For the time being, the Sensex will continue on its southward journey,'' remarked a broker with a leading domestic brokerage.

The volume on the BOLT network was Rs 11.33 billion from 39.2 million shares.

Satyam Computers remained at the top of the turnover list recording Rs 2.76 billion followed by Zee Telefilms (Rs 1.47 billion), ITC (Rs 1.42 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 934.6 million), Reliance (Rs 632.8 million) and SBI (Rs 592.2 million).

Others, which recorded a high turnover included Infosys, Castrol, Telco, NIIT, Dr Reddy's, HLL, MTNL, Tata Tea and Hindalco.

UNI