COMMENTARY
INTERVIEW
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

With domestic institutions help, Sensex closes slightly lower

The weakening in the Indian currency against US dollar in the foreign exchange market demoralised the foreign institutional investors. They continued with their selling pressure and sold sizeable amount of heavy-weighted shares including TISCO, TELCO, ITC and BHEL, leading brokers said.

The domestic institutions particularly Unit Trust of India entered the market at around 1500 hours IST started purchasing the bluechips including 'B1' group shares, which recovered the gap and pivotals closed marginally lower than previous close.

The turmoil in the Asian market made the FIIs invest in the Indian capital market. The stock prices at Hong Kong and Singapore closed lower on concerns over renewed Asian currency woes.

The market opened on buying support from local institutions and bull operators. Share prices reacted on selling pressure from FIIs after the midsession. At the close of day, UTI bought heavily, coupled with shortcovering by the bear operators, and equity prices recovered.

Reflecting downtrend, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) opened at 3336.33 points, touched day's high of 3344.41 points, low of 3247.63 points, before closing at 3329.14 points, suffering a loss of 18.19 points as against the previous close of 3347.33 points.

The broadbased BSE National Index (100 scrips) finished at 1448.94 points over the last trading day's close of 1457.14 points losing 09.20 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices declined by 02.73 and 02.47 points to 324.86 and 137.20 points as compared to yesterday's closing of 327.59 and 139.67 points respectively.

The volume of the business in the exchange increased marginally. The total turnover was Rs 9.6 billion involving 35.6 million shares.

Indian Tobacco giant ITC has registered the highest turnover of Rs 4.2 billion followed by Tata Tea Rs 1 billion, SBI Rs 855.1 million, Reliance Industries Rs 732.8 million, Castrol India Rs 37.55 million, Hind Lever Rs 313.2 million, TISCO Rs 214.7 million, TELCO Rs 212.6 million, ACC Rs 185 million, BHEL Rs 169.7 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 154.4 million, MTNL Rs 139.7 million and Hindustan Petrol Rs 113.9 million in the specified groups.

Good transactions were witnessed at Infosys Tech (Rs 57 million), Corporation Bank (Rs 23.6 million), Satyam Comp (Rs 21.3 million), Videsh Sanch (Rs 17.1 million), Credit Rati (Rs 1.48 million), Punjab Tractor (Rs 13.8 million), Autolec Ind (Rs 10.9 million), Emtex Ind (Rs 10.7 million), Lakshmi Mach (Rs 9.7 million) in the non-specified counters.

UNI