COMMENTARY
INTERVIEW
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

After the fall, the rise

After recording sharp losses during last two days, pivotals on Friday recovered marginally on the Bombay Stock Exchange following good buying support from Unit Trust of India on the last day of the current settlement.

Improvements in the Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo stock markets and yesterday's dinner meeting between Prime Minister I K Gujral and Congress President Sitaram Kesri to sort out the ongoing political issues boosted the market sentiments on the country's premier bourse, leading BSE member said.

The foreign institutional Investors sold considerably in the morning session at the prime counters. However, hectic buying support by UTI settled the market well by the late afternoon. UTI made purchases of Reliance Industries, HPCL, Hindustan Lever and some others.

Reflecting the trend, the BSE Sensitive Index opened at 3570.34 points, touched the day's high of 3594.18, declined to the day's low of 3514.69 and later ended at 3569.77 points, netting a gain of 15.67 points over the previous close of 3554.10 points.

Similarly, the broadbased BSE-100 Index also improved by 4.91 points to 1544.03 points over the previous close of 1539.12 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices closed higher by 0.26 and 0.12 points to 347.16 and 157.36 points as against the previous close of 346.90 and 157.24 points respectively.

The National Stock Exchange and the interbank foreign exchange market remained closed on account of Guru Nanak Jayanti.

The total turnover on the BSE increased sharply to Rs 8.2 billion from yesterday's Rs 6.8 billion.

Tobacco giant ITC topped the list of turnover and registered the highest turnover at Rs 3.3 billion, followed by SBI Rs 1.2 billion, Reliance Rs 1.1 billion, Tata Tea Rs 338.2 million and Castrol Rs 303.5 million.

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters like TELCO Rs 230.4 million, MTNL Rs 179 million, ACC Rs 141.2 million, TISCO Rs 124.2 million, Hind Lever Rs 116.5 million, Hero Honda Rs 102.4 million, Guj Amb Rs 77.7 million, Bhel Rs 77.6 million, ICICI Ltd Rs 65.5 million and L&T Rs 49 million.

Good transactions were reported at some counters in B1 group like Nicholas Pir, UTI Master Plus, Tata Vashist, Satyam Comp, LML Ltd, Infosys Tech, Reliance Pet, HDFC Bank, NIIT, ICICI Banking Corp, Cipla Ltd, Bank of India, Texmaco Ltd, Bank of Baroda and Software.

Among the issues, ACC gained by Rs 11.75 to Rs 1182 Bajaj Auto improved by Rs 18.75 to Rs 568, Glaxo India up by Rs 3.50 to Rs 379, Indian Hotels increased by Rs 2.25 to Rs 587.50, MTNL looked up by Re 1 to Rs 228.25, Reliance recovered by Rs 2.20 to Rs 165.75, and State Bank gained by Rs 1.25 to Rs 244.25.

On the other hand, Century lost by Rs 6 to Rs 752.25, Hero Honda drifted lower by Rs 3.50 to Rs 871.75, Hindalco declined by Rs 3.25 to Rs 871.75, Indian Rayon down by Rs 8.25 to Rs 183, ITC moved down by Rs 1.50 to Rs 537.75, Ponds slipped by Rs 25.50 to Rs 810.50, TELCO eased by Rs 3.50 to Rs 327 and TISCO dropped by Rs 1 to Rs 153.25.

UNI