COMMENTARY
INTERVIEW
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Sensex crashes below 4400 mark

Pivotals declined further on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday and the BSE Sensex closed below the 4400 mark, following heavy bull liquidation by the bull operators at the last day of current settlement period.

The market opened on a firm note, but moved down after the midsession as the bull operators who have covered heavily at the opening of the week, squared off their position at the end of settlement before the badla session, marketmen said.

The BSE sensitive index opened at 4460.23, touched the day's high of 4467.18, declined to the day's low of 4373.20, and later closed at 4397.54, showing a net loss of 49.52 points over the previous close of 4447.06 points.

Similarly, the BSE-100 index moved down by 23.43 points to 1914.02 over the previous close of 1937.45.

Foreign institutional investors made purchases at strong counters such as Reliance, IDBI, and Tata Tea.

The total turnover on the BSE reported during the day was at Rs 10.28 billion.

Reliance topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 2.1085 billion, followed by ITC Rs 1.5957 billion, SBI Rs 1.3114 billion, TISCO Rs 949.2 million, Tata Tea Rs 759.5 billion, TELCO Rs 462 million, ACC Rs 318.9 million, Castrol Rs 220.3 million, BSES Rs 195.6 million, Ranbaxy Rs 144.6 million, Larsen and Toubro Rs 128.1 million, Colgate Rs 120.1 million, Hind Lever Rs 119.2 million, GE Shipping Rs 78.9 million and Asian Paint Rs 78.6 million.

National Stock Exchange

A weak spell was observed on the National Stock Exchange on Friday as leading scrips exhibited a further downslide in prices.

Reflecting the trend, the NSE-50 index opened at 1269.55, touched the day's high of 1269.55, declined to the day's low of 1253.20, and later closed at 1256.95, showing a net loss of 12.70 points over the previous close of 1269.65.

Similarly, the midcap index moved down by 13.55 points to 1360.10 against the previous close of 1373.65 points.

The total turnover on the NSE reported during the day was at Rs 13.1356 billion.

Reliance Industries stood first in the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 2.549 billion, followed by ITC Rs 2.0834 billion, Tata Tea Rs 1.525 billion, SBI Rs 1.4172 billion, TISCO Rs 1.1456 billion.

Hectic activity was also observed at the other counters like ACC, L&T, TELCO, Castrol, Colgate, Hind Lever, BSES, Rel Capital, ICICI, Bajaj Auto, Ranbaxy, Jindal Strips, Tata Chem, Asian Paints, MTNL, Saw Pipes, Mahindra and Mahindra, Wockhardt, Satyam Comp and IFCI.

The top five NSE-50 gainers were Ranbaxy Labs, Tata Tea, BHEL, ABB and IPCL. The top losers were HPCL, Asian Paints, GE Ship, Ashok Leyland and Essar Steel.

Meanwhile, share prices on Friday recovered marginally at the Over The Counter Exchange of India. The composite index opened at 122.81, touched the day's high of 125.28, declined to the day's low of 122.81, and later closed at 123.41 showing a decrease of 0.60 points over the previous close of 122.81.

UNI