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UTI rescues Sensex

After losing sharply at the intraday trading, pivotals registered moderate recovery towards the end of the session, thanks to the aggressive buying by the Unit Trust of India, which made considerable purchases at the bluechip counters, at the time of continued selling pressure from foreign institutional investors.

Reflecting the weak trend, the BSE Sensex opened at 3744.39, lower from the previous close of 3778.23 points, touched the day's high of 3766.76 points, declined sharply by 64.20 points to touch the day's low of 3714.03 points, and later recovered smartly to close at 3763.96 points, showing a net loss of 14.27 points over the previous close.

According to marketmen, the withdrawal of the global depository receipts issue of Gas Authority of India Limited had affected market sentiments on the country's premier bourse.

The FIIs made considerable selling on the fundamentally strong counters while there was not much support from domestic institutional investors except UTI.

The total turnover on the BSE was Rs 5.1 billion. ITC continued at the top in the list of turnover by registering highest turnover at Rs 2 billion, followed by State Bank Rs 675.9 million, Reliance Rs 568.7 million, Tata Tea Rs 346.9 million and Castrol Rs 171 million.

Hectic activity was also observed at the other counters like TELCO Rs 124.2 million, MTNL Rs 115.5 million, TISCO Rs 104.5 million, ACC Rs 89.9 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 69.2 million, Hind Petrol Rs 59.7 million, Hind Lever Rs 50.7 million, BHEL Rs 40.8 million, L&T Rs 40.7 million and IPCL Rs 3.61 million.

Good transactions were witnessed at some counters in B1 group like Infosys Tech, Carr Aircon, LML, Orchid Chem, Madras Cem, Satyam Comp, Aptech, Pun Tractor, Sofware Sol, Bank of Baroda, Wipro, Dig Equip, Contain Corp, Nicholas Pir and Reliance Pet.

GAIL scrip came under heavy selling pressure following the withdrawal of its GDR issue by the government. The scrip topped the B2 group by registering highest turnover of Rs 5.3 million.

UNI