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FII buying props up sentiment; Nifty up 10 points to 944.90

Equities improved on good buying support by the foreign institutional investors and public financial institutions at the National Stock Exchange today.

The S&P CNX Nifty Index opened at 938.65, touched the day's high of 945.05, low of 922.80 before closing at 944.90, showing a net gain of 10.60 points as against the previous close of 934.30.

The CNX Nifty Junior also ended higher by 21.20 points at 1648.90, while the CNX Defty rose by 8.70 points to 770.55 at the fag end.

The S&P CNX-500 and CNX Midcap-200 firmed by 4.49 and 4.64 points to end at 655.86 and 579.51.

Today, 379 scrips advanced, 593 declined and 88 remained unchanged on the NSE while 60 securities hit their price bands today.

The total turnover on the NSE was Rs 22.56 billion from trading in 70.8 million shares in 239,528 trades. The debentures traded value were valued at Rs 2.73 million.

Pentafour Software topped the turnover list with Rs 5.69 billion, followed by Satyam Computer (Rs 3.96 billion), ITC (Rs 2.91 billion), Reliance (Rs 1.91 billion) and HCL-HP (Rs 950.5 million).

Others that recorded a high turnover were: Telco, Zee Telefilms, SBI New, Castrol, Tata Tea, SquareD Software, Silverline and Hindustan Lever Limited.

The top gainers were Ranbaxy, Arvind Mills, ICICI and IPCL while the losers were HDFC Bank, East India Hotels, Tata Chemicals, NIIT and Reliance Capital.

The FIIs were net buyers to the tune of Rs 21.9 million on the NSE while net buying of FIs/mutual funds was Rs 471,000.

The wholesale debt market of the NSE witnessed trades worth Rs 6.11 billion. The 11.40 per cent government loan maturing in the year 2000 was traded for Rs 1.35 billion at a weighted yield of 11.28 per cent . The 11.75 per cent government loan maturing in 2001 was traded for Rs 600 million at a weighted yield of 11.45 per cent. The zero coupon government bond maturing in 2000 (Series III) was traded for Rs 550 million at a weighted yield of 11.20 per cent. Commercial paper of Paharpur Cooling Towers Limited maturing on April 7, 1999 was traded for Rs 100 million at a yield of 11.15 per cent.

A repo trade was transacted for Rs 200 million at 12 per cent for a term of 12 days.

UNI

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