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Markets upbeat over Sinha's promised reforms: Sensex 4815, Nifty at 1413, rupee-$ 43.38

The Bombay Stock Exchange opened on a volatile note on Monday morning. The Sensex surged past the 4900 mark within minutes after opening. On Friday, it closed at 4783.

At noon, the 30-share index was at 4835, up 52 points or 1.08 per cent.

All-round buying was witnessed in infotech, pharma and commodity sectors. Telco and SBI were firm. Pivotals were steady. IDBI at Rs 43.70 hit the upper limit of the circuit-breaker.

Dealers said the market opened on an upbeat note in expectation of unveiling of 'second generation of reforms' promised by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha.

The Sensex closed at 4816, up 32 points or 0.66 per cent over Friday's close.

Select index-based scrips staged smart rally on renewed buying interest from institutional investors and local operators.

The software and pharma stocks, however, registered sharp decline on sustained selling pressure from foreign institutional investors and bull operators, dealers said.

Satyam Computer Services, Pentafour Software, Infosys Technologies, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Dr Reddy's, Cipla and Grasim moved down sharply before witnessing wide fluctuations, dealers said.

While the focus of the rally was seen on engineering scrips like ABB, L&T, Siemens, BHEL and index-based counters Tisco, State Bank of India, ITC and Reliance during the day.

Reflecting the mixed trend, the 30-share BSE Sensex opened at 4850.73 points, nearly 68 points higher from the Friday's close of 4783.08 points, surpassed the 4,900 mark, touched the day's high of 4912.36 points, but fell sharply to touch the day's low of 4765.57 points, before closing at 4816.01 points, showing a net gain of 32.93 points from the previous close.

The wide fluctuations clearly reflected the movement of the BSE's benchmark index.

The broad-based BSE-100 index rose moderately by 18.63 points to 2276.97 points as against the previous close of 2258.34 points.

''The BSE Sensex would have crashed by over 100 points today if the index-based counters could have followed the infotech and pharma'', a stockbroker said.

Media giant Zee Telefilms which was also a front-runner in past couple of weeks came under severe selling pressure during the day. The scrip opened at around Rs 5,800, fell sharply to Rs 5,300 and later ended at Rs 5,500 on the BSE.

The story was similar in the case of Satyam Computer and Pentafour, where the scrips opened on a steady note and recorded wide fluctuations before registering sharp losses as against their previous close, dealers said.

Mirroring the trend, the BSE-500 index declined sharply by 8.63 points to 1589.36 points as against Friday's close of 1597.99 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 2.46 and 0.81 points to 530.10 and 203.40 points as against the previous close of 532.56 and 204.21 points respectively.

At the National Stock Exchange, the S&P CNX Nifty was steady. At noon, it was at 1438, marginally up from Friday's close of 1433.

The Nifty closed at 1413, down 20 points or 1.39 per cent over Friday's close.

At the inter-bank foreign exchange market, the Indian rupee was up a tad at 43.38 to the US dollar.

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