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FIs' late selling offsets FII buying; Sensex down two points, 3223.57

Pivotals dropped by a marginal one point, after shooting up sharply during the intra-day trading on good buying support from the foreign institutional investors, on the last day of settlement at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The market was volatile during the day as there was lot of activity on the buying counter with the foreign institutional institutions buying major shares of Pentafour Software, Satyam, L&T, MTNL, BHEL and Bajaj Auto.

At the fag end, there was a selling spree from local investors which included the Unit Trust of India. This coupled with the move of the bull operators to liquidate their positions on this last day of settlement, eased the market considerably from its highest level to close at around yesterday's close, experiencing a drop of approximately one point. Besides weak overseas markets also effected the overall sentiment.

The Sensex opened moderately higher at 3230.98 points and touched a day's high of 3266.71 points during the day. Selling pressure from domestic institutions brought it down to a level of 3215.77 and finally closed at 3223.57 points recording a drop of 1.83 points from the yesterday's close of 3223.57 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index eased a nominal 1.05 points to close at 1424.72 points as against the previous close of 1425.77 points. It recorded a high of 1442.16 points and a low of 1422.01 points during the day after opening higher at 1428.18 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices lowered by 0.44 and 0.12 points at 329.28 and 128.96 points respectively as against its previous close of 329.72 and 129.08 points respectively.

Among the issues, Bajaj Auto gained by Rs 5 to Rs 690, BHEL by Rs 5.40 to Rs 298.50, Glaxo by Rs 23.25 to Rs 473.25, Gujarat Ambuja Cement by Rs 7.20 to Rs 209.80, India Hotel by Rs 1.25 to Rs 395.25, Infosys Tech by Rs 49.25 to Rs 2508.75, ITC Hotels by Rs 8.50 to Rs 136.50, ITC by Rs 4.25 to Rs 710.75, L&T rose by Rs 5.60 to Rs 195, M&M by Rs 3.40 to Rs 188.40, Pentafour Software by Rs 36.25 to Rs 727.25, Reliance by Rs 1.10 to Rs 126.10 and SBI by Rs 2.40 to Rs 211.

Total turnover on the BOLT network also rose sharply to Rs 16.06 billion with the number of trades being 159,402 and the number of listed scrips being 1605.

The tobacco giant ITC topped the list by registering highest turnover of Rs 2.75 billion followed by Satyam Computer Rs 2.50 billion, Pentafour Software Rs 1.57 billion, SBI Rs 1.15 billion, Zee Telefilms Rs 1.07 billion, Reliance Rs 859 million, Dr Reddy's Rs 506.9 million, L&T Rs 438.4 million, BHEL Rs 374.3 million, Castrol India Rs 287.9 million, Tata Tea Rs 261.8 million, MTNL Rs 253.8 million, ACC Rs 245.7 million, Digital Equipment Rs 214.5 million and Glaxo India Rs 175.4 million.

Hectic activity was witnessed at the other 'B1' counters led by DSQ Software at Rs 110.7 million, Agrevo India Rs 103.9 million, HCL Infosys Rs 68.9 million, BFL Software Rs 35.9 million, Silverline Rs 33.3 million and Software Solutions Rs 22.5 million.

UNI