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Equities rise further; Sensex recovers 17 more points to 3586.80

Equities gained further at the Bombay Stock Exchange following moderate buying support from operators and institutional investors today.

Except infotech, other sectors of the market witnessed a mixed trend as only select shares from the pharma, FMCG, and others posted marginal gains, dealers said.

They attributed the firm trend in infotech stocks to the rupee's depreciation against the US dollar, they said. The fall in the rupee is expected to further boost sentiments at the infotech counters.

ACC, Pentafour Software, Digital Equipment, MTNL, Ranbaxy, German Remedies, Rhone Poul and Parke Davis were in the limelight while ITC which had reported a handsome gain yesterday, drifted lower on speculative selling pressure.

Reflecting the trend, the 30-share BSE Sensex opened at 3575.04 points, surpassing the psychological barrier of 3600. It touched the day's high of 3624.58 points, but fell to the day's low of 3562.71 points before closing at 3586.80 points, showing a net gain of 17.33 points as against the previous close of 3569.47 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index firmed up by 6.56 points to 1754.04 points from the previous close of 1567.48 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices moved in opposite directions. The BSE-200 closed higher by 0.93 points to 361.92 points from the previous close of 360.99 points. The Dollex index eased marginally by 0.07 points to 141.31 points as against the previous close of 143.38 points.

Among the issues, BSES gained by Rs 12.50 to Rs 168.90, Dabur Rs 11.50 to Rs 678.50, Hindustan Lever Rs 32 to Rs 2,232, India Hotel Rs 2 to Rs 301, Infosys Technologies Rs 52 to Rs 2,825, MTNL Rs 10.50 to Rs 170, NIIT Rs 54 to Rs 1,815, Pentafour Software Rs 33 to Rs 1,192, Telco Rs 4.80 to Rs 154.70.

The losers were Bajaj Auto which dropped by Rs 43.50 to Rs 608, Colgate Rs 2.50 to Rs 175.00, German Remedies Rs 2.25 to Rs 804, Glaxo Rs 4.25 to Rs 809, Grasim Rs 2 to Rs 143 and Hindalco Rs 4 to Rs 455.

Total turnover on the the BOLT system reported during the day was Rs 17.79 billion.

Pentafour Software topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 3.79 billion, followed by ITC Rs 1.81 billion, Satyam Computers Rs 1.73 billion.

Other actively traded counters were Digital Equipment (Rs 872.4 million), MTNL (Rs 642.7 million), SBI (Rs 549.3 million), Ranbaxy (Rs 536.2 million), Infosys Technologies (Rs 516.9 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 504 million), Tata Tea (Rs 382.1 million), Telco (Rs 380.7 million), Reliance (Rs 371 million), BHEL (Rs 301.5 million), L&T (Rs 284.3 million and ACC (Rs 249.1 million).

UNI

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