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Sensex surges 118 points

The Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index on Monday touched a three-year high of 4478.19 points as the bull run pushed the Sensex up by 118 points during a single trading session. The Sensex surpassed its earlier record of October 7, 1994, when it closed at 4420.04 points.

Brokers said that the Sensex registered an unprecedented gain even though there was no major buying support from the foreign or domestic institutional investors.

Large-scale buying was noticed in prime scrips like Castrol, State Bank of India, ITC, Bajaj Auto, Tata Tea, and some others.

Market sources said that speculators, taking advantage of the no-delivery period in some prime scrips, took huge positions in the select counters, resulting in to a big rally on the country's premier bourse.

Some of the domestic institutional investors sold heavily in select counters during the course of trading, they said.

The no-delivery period has been started in Castrol, BPL, Colgate-Palmolive, Essar Steel, Gujarat Ambuja, Gujarat Narmada Fertilisers, Industrial Finance Corporation of India, ITC, Pfizer, and some others.

Analysts said that market players are under impression that the leading domestic institutional investor, the Unit Trust of India, will enter the market in a big way to support the market and are hopeful of general investors coming back to the market. The B group scrips have already started picking up over the past few days, they said.

The marketmen said that the prime scrips started gaining since Sunday evening when some of the scrips like Reliance, State Bank, Bajaj Auto, and Tata Tea were quoted higher in kerb deals following a lower badla on Saturday.

Reflecting the bullish phase, the BSE Sensex opened at 4392.47 and later closed at 4465.37, showing a net gain of 118.05 points over Friday's close of 4347.32 points.

Similarly, the BSE-100 index moved up by 53.94 points to 1945.84, against the previous close of 1891.90 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices went up by 11.86 and 5.25 points to 422.11 and 201.70 points against the previous close of 421.25 and 196.45 points respectively.

The BSE Sensex has registered a record gain of about 276 points during the last seven trading sessions.

The total turnover on the BSE reported during the day was at Rs 11.8046 billion.

Market leader State Bank of India registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.1794 billion, followed by ITC Rs 2.1281 billion, Reliance Rs 1.5585 billion, TISCO Rs 1.1704 billion, and Tata Tea Rs 656.3 million.

Other actively traded scrips were Castrol India Rs 440 million, TELCO Rs 359 million, Larsen and Toubro Rs 321.9 billion, ACC Rs 227.7 billion, Colgate Rs 183.4 million, ICICI Ltd Rs 156.5 million, Hindustan Lever Rs 154 million, GE Shipping Rs 128.3 million, HDFC Ltd Rs 110.3 million and Tata Chemicals Rs 97.9 million.

The BSE authorities declared a payout on Monday in respect of A, B1, and B2 group securities for settlement No 18, period ended July 25, 1997.

National Stock Exchange

Pivotal's moved up sharply on the National Stock Exchange and the market witnessed an upbeat sentiment during the course of trading on Monday

The NSE-50 index opened at 1238.72, touched a net high of 1254.50, a low of 1237.95 and closed at 1250.40, showing a net gain of 18 points over Friday's close of 1232.40. The midcap index also firmed up by 23.20 points to 1353.75 against the previous close of 1330.55 points.

The total turnover on the NSE reported during the day was at Rs 21.2837 billion.

The tobacco giant ITC topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 7.957 billion, followed by State Bank Rs 3.1657 million, Reliance Rs 2.7069 million, TISCO Rs 1.8464 billion and Tata Tea Rs 1.2771 billion.

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters like ACC Rs 867.7 million, L&T Rs 674.2 million, Castrol Rs 356.3 million, ICICI Rs 239 million, Hind Lever Rs 186.3 million, Colgate Rs 125.2 million, Tata Chem Rs 114.8 million, BSES Rs 111.5 million, GE Shipping Rs 85.5 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 74.9 million, HDFC Rs 73.2 million, IFCI Rs 71.1 million, BHEL Rs 60.3 million, Asian Paints Rs 57.1 million, Gujarat Ambuja Rs 48.7 million, Carrier Air Conditioners Rs 47.6 million, Orchid Chem Rs 46.9 million, Orient Bank Rs 45.9 million and MTNL Rs 42.8 million.

The top five NSE 50 gainers were Tata Tea, Tata Chem, L&T, HDFC, and Ranbaxy Labs. The top five losers were Asian Paints, ICICI, Andhra Valley, IPCL, and Indo Gulf Fert.

UNI