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Market remains subdued due to unchanged interest rate; Sensex slips 7 points to 3443.99

The Reserve Bank of India's Credit Policy failed to cheer the stock market as a downward trend set in, in spite of select shares registering handsome gains on moderate good buying support from institutional investors at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The absence of cut in the interest rates, dealers said, made the market's response to the policy lukewarm.

Barring Corporation Bank's, shares of State Bank of India, Bank of India and Bank of Baroda dropped immediately after the announcement of Credit Policy, they said.

Select shares mainly from infotech, pharma and FMCG rose considerably on buying support from domestic and foreign institutional investors.

Mirroring the trend, the 30-share BSE Sensex opened at 3459.81 points, touched the day's high of 3479.21 points, fell to the day's low of 3406.67 points before closing at 3443.99 points, showing a net loss of 7.44 points from the previous close of 3451.43 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index gained marginally by 0.44 points to 1496.36 points from the previous close of 1495.92 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices also closed higher by 0.33 and 0.32 points to 342.46 and 133.25 points from the previous close of 342.13 and 132.93 points respectively.

Secruties which hit the upward circuit filters were Global Telesystems, Square D Software, Zee Telefims, BPL, Reckit and Colman, CMC, Birla Erricson, Hindalco, Punjab Tractors, Mahindra and Mahindra.

Among the pivotals that posted handsome gains were ACC, Smithkline, Pentafour Software, PSI Data, NIIT, Ramco, Silverline, HCL-HP, SRG Infotech, CMC, Pfizer, Dr Reddy's, IPCA.

Total turnover on the BOLT system reported during the day was Rs 13.59 billion.

Pentafour Software topped the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 1.92 billion, followed by Satyam Computers Rs 1.62 billion, Zee Telefilms Rs 895 million, Ranbaxy Rs 821.4 million and SBI Rs 820 million.

Other actively traded counters were Reliance (Rs 766.1 million), ITC (Rs 662.1 million), Digital Equipment (Rs 378.6 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 348.4 million), ACC (Rs 341.6 million), Tata Tea (Rs 295.9 million), MTNL (Rs 265.6 million), BPL Limited (Rs 217.6 million), Glaxo (Rs 199 million) and Infosys Technology (Rs 176.9 million).

UNI

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