COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Downtrend does a 'hat-trick'; Sensex down 18 points, 3292.28

The Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange today quoted below the psychological barrier of 3300 points and lost by another 18 points following continued downtrend at the country's premier bourse for the third straight day today.

Barring few select infotech counters, there was overall selling pressure in the market, dealers said.

The foreign institutional investors made purchases in some fundamentally strong counters.

Reflecting the weak trend, the 30-scrip Sensex opened at 3222.45 points, touched the day's high of 3333.80 points, touched the day's low of 3251.18 points before closing at 3292.28 points, showing a net loss of 18.18 points from the previous close of 3310.46 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index declined by 15.19 points to 1459.94 points from the previous close of 1475.13 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices also eased by 3.10 and 1.28 points to 338.28 and 132.45 points respectively.

Banks scrips witnessed average decline following Moody's concern over India's economic conditions and performance of banking industry.

Scrips like Mastek, NIIT, Tata Telecom, Infosys Technologies, HCL-HP, CMC Limited, Ashok Leyland, German Remedies went up and hit the price bands while Centuries Textiles, Bank of Rajasthan, BHEL, Tata Tea, Bank of Baroda, Cadbury's, Corporation Bank, Crompton Greaves, ITC, LML, Grasim, ICICI emerged as major losers.

According to a broker, non-payment of margins by some fellow brokers also affected sentiments on the BSE.

Total turnover on the BOLT system dropped further to Rs 16.54 billion. Satyam Computers topped the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 3.61 billion, followed by Telco Rs 2.03 billion, Pentafour Software Rs 1.88 billion and ITC Rs 1.43 billion.

Other actively traded scrips were Zee Telefilms (Rs 924.3 million), Reliance (Rs 888.9 million), SBI (Rs 654.7 million), Tata Tea (Rs 603.1 million), Infosys Technologies (Rs 311.1 million), Tisco (Rs 308.6 million), NIIT (Rs 205.2 million), MTNL (Rs 200.9 million), Castrol India (Rs 182.5 million), ACC (Rs 176.2 million) and L&T (Rs 136.1 million).

UNI

Business news