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Shares suffer selling pressure; Sensex sheds 29 points, 3236.76

Pivotals declined further at the Bombay Stock Exchange today following speculative selling pressure by institutional investors and squaring up by operators.

According to analysts, the market was "overbought" for the last couple of days and the correction was due. Most players are busy unwinding their positions in view of the last day at the National Stock Exchange, they said.

Leading BSE brokers, however, attributed the downtrend to the fluid political situation in the wake of reports appearing in a section of press that the Telugu Desam Party is likely to reconsider its support to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.

Reflecting the bearish phase, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened at 3251.96 points, touched the day's high of 3279.98 points, fell to a low of 3219.54 points and closed at 3236.76 points, a net loss of 29.15 points from the previous close of 3265.91 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index dropped 14.92 points to 1424.32 points as against the previous close of 1439.24 points.

The marketmen also turned cautious in view of the annual Budget which is to be presented on February 27. Unprecedented rise in some of the I.T. stocks also prevented them from taking positions, one of the dealers at an institutional brokerage house said.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices eased by 3.39 and 1.33 points to 330.01 and 129.28 points as against the previous close of 333.40 and 130.61 points.

Total turnover on the BOLT system reported during the day increased by Rs 1.10 billion to Rs 14.37 billion. Pentafour Software topped the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.60 billion, Satyam Computers by Rs 1.58 billion, ITC Rs 1.28 billion.

Other actively traded scrips were Zee Telefilm (Rs 579.6 million), Telco (Rs 569.3 million), Castrol (Rs 560.9 million), Reliance (Rs 493.7 million), Digital Equipment (Rs 381.5 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 381.3 million), Tata Tea (Rs 370 million), Infosys Technologies (Rs 348.8 million), SBI (Rs 345 million), MTNL (Rs 315.2 million), Glaxo (Rs 205.1 million) and ACC (Rs 202 million).

UNI

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