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Sensex crashed heavily last week

The Sensex and Natex tumbled by 171.59 and 74.53 points as equity prices crashed as a variety of factors -- heavy offloading by the foreign institutional investors, depreciation of the rupee against the dollar in the forex market, expected hike in petroleum products prices, and the fall in the Asian market -- affected trading sentiments on country's premier bourse, the Bombay Stock Exchange, during the week ended August 29.

The sharp fall in stocks prices in East and Southeast Asia demoralised the sentiment of the FIIs which reflected in the Indian capital market, the market sources said, and added that share prices also crashed at the Singapore bourse heavily and touched the lowest mark of 1723 since June 1993.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE sensitive index dropped below 3900 mark and closed at 3876.08 points as against its previous week's close of 4047.67 points, suffering a loss of 171.59 points during the four day's trading session.

The BSE-100 index closed at 1694.76 points over the last week's close of 1769.29 points losing 74.53 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices declined by 17.51 and 09.43 points to 380.04 and 174.02 points as compared to last week's close of 397.55 and 183.45 points respectively.

The total turnover drifted further lower by Rs 1 billion to Rs 33.1 billion. During the week, the impending petroleum price hike, delayed industrial recovery and fall in the rupee value by two per cent against the dollar in the forex market dampened the sentiment of the market investors.

The Market opened with holiday on account of Gokulashtami. On Tuesday the Sensex gained marginally on renewed buying support from FIIs and domestic institutions. However, the equity prices declined on Wednesday following lack of buying support from market operators and heavy profit booking by the bull operators. Leading brokers said that domestic institutions like Unit Trust of India and other institutions bought considerable number of heavy weighted shares on Wednesday but which arrested the downfall in the market. UTI bought mostly non-debenture instead of equity, they added.

BSE director and former president Mahendra Kampani died on Wednesday in a road accident.

On Thursday, despite selective buying support from the domestic institutions, equity prices suffered heavy setback on sustained selling pressure from FIIs and the downfall in the Asian market affected the Indian capital market.

Meanwhile, the Skindia Global Depository Receipts index crashed by 6.38 per cent. The crisis in Malaysia also spread to other Asian markets.

Pivotal prices declined modestly following lack of buying support from market operators and heavy profit booking by the bull operators on the National Stock Exchange.

The NSE-50 index closed at 1105.00 points as against its last week's close of 1160.45 points, suffering a loss of 55.45 points.

The midcap index decreased by 37.90 points to 1255.15 points over the previous week's close of 1293.05 points. The total turnover on NSE was improved by Rs 24.7 billion to Rs 96.3 billion as compared to the previous week's total turnover of Rs 71.6 billion.

UNI