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Sensex loses 84 points

Share prices crashed at the Bombay Stock Exchange following heavy bull-liquidation and hectic selling pressure from foreign institutional investors coupled with lack of buying support from domestic investors, pushing the Sensex down by 84 points on the last day of weekly settlement.

The market witnessed all-round selling pressure and very few scrips could gain marginally on speculative buying support, dealers said.

The dealers also attributed the higher badla at Calcutta and Ahmedabad stock exchanges for bull liquidation on the BSE and heavy margins levelled by the authorities.

Reflecting the downtrend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened higher at 3322.71 points touched the day's high of 3330.42 points fell below the 3300 mark and touched the day's low of 3205.88 points before closing at 3207.85 points, showing a net loss of 84.43 points from the previous close of 3292.28 points.

The Sensex had lost 189 points during the last four consecutive sessions.

The broad-based BSE 100 index fell sharply by 38.53 points to 1421.41 points as against the previous close of 1459.94 points.

The BSE-200 and dollex indices also eased by 8.75 and 3.27 points to 329.53 and 129.18 points from the previous close of 338.28 and 132.45 points respectively.

Market watchers felt that the downtrend was due to operators and FIIS offloading their positions. They said there was no threat of further slide, and the market likely to stabilise by Wednesday.

Despite the downtrend, scrips like Software Solutions, Tata Telecom, Hind Lever Chemical, Gulf Oil and Mastek hit the circuit bands and gained sharply.

Satyam Computer, MTNL, Castrol, Mastek Nelco too gained marginally.

Equities that suffered badly were Telco, Zee Tele, Voltas, Pentafour Soft, Crompt Greaves, Digital, SBI, Cochin Refi, Hero Honda, Tata Tea, Glaxo, NIIT and Bom Dyeing.

The newly listed scrip Sonata Software opened higher at 225, touched the day's high of 245 and ended at 229. It opened higher by Rs 140 than the open offer made by the company at Rs 80, market sources adding that about 369,000 scrips changed hands Friday.

The total turnover on the BSE stood at Rs 19.20 billion. Out of 7267 listed scrips, 1694 were traded in 187,879 trades, a BSE release said.

Tobacco giant ITC topped the list of turnvoer by registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.82 billion, followed by Satyam Computer Rs 2.81 billion, Pentafour Rs 2.36 billion, Telco Rs 1.30 billion and Reliance Rs 981.5 million.

Other actively traded scrips were Zee telefilm (Rs 777.8 million), Nestle Ltd (Rs 728.8 million), SBI (Rs 682.1 million), Tata Tea (Rs 588.8 million), Castrol Ind (Rs 542.1 million), Tisco (Rs 288.5 million), MTNL (Rs 267.8 million), Glaxo (Rs 264 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 245.5 million) and NIIT (Rs 177.5 million).

UNI

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