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Sensex crashes 125, recovers to end 67 lower

Stocks prices continued their downslide as the Sensex crashed by 125.75 points during the day, but recovered by over 50 points towards the close following good purchase support by the domestic institutions on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

The market opened lower following short-covering and profit-booking by the foreign institutional investors who remained wary of investing in the Indian capital market in the wake of the weakening rupee against US dollar in the forex market.

On the other hand, local institutions such as the Unit Trust of India and the Life Insurance Corporation of India continued their sizeable buying at the prime counters and arrested the heavy downfall in the share prices, leading brokers said.

Another broker said that due to the uncertain political situation at the Centre, speculators have started booking profits at lower levels.

The continuous fall in the share price at the East Asian market was also an influential factor in the downtrend in the equity prices on the Indian bourses.

Reflecting downtrend, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) opened at 3479.07 points due to heavy short-covering and profit-taking at lower level and dropped below two psychological barriers -- 3500 and 3400 -- during intraday trading. During the third session of trading, the Sensex recovered to 3454.65 points, thereby reducing the setback to 67.25 points compared to the previous close of 3518.90 points.

The broadbased BSE National Index (100 scrips) also eased below 1500 mark and closed at 1497.97 points suffering a net loss of 26.23 points over yesterday's close of 1523.20 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices declined by 04.87 and 01.80 points to 338.21 and 150.44 points as compared to last trading day's close of 343.08 and 152.24 points respectively.

The Unit Trust of India has sold 1,633,479 shares of Vikrant Tyres Limited at the rate of Rs 76 per share.

The total turnover of business on the BSE increased further to Rs 8.7 billion from yesterday's turnover of Rs 7.5 million involving 32.7 million shares.

ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 385.49 million followed by SBI Rs 897.2 million, Reliance Rs 852.4 million, Castrol India Rs 452.4 million, Tata Tea Rs 439.7 (which declared its half-year results), MTNL Rs 25.95 million.

Other specified scrips, in which hectic trading was witnessed, were TELCO (Rs 224.8 million), Hind Lever (Rs 187.8 million), TISCO (Rs 135.7 million), ACC (Rs 127 million,) BHEL (Rs 118.4 million), ICICI (Rs 93.9 million), Hero Honda (Rs 69.9 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 68.8 million) and IPCL (Rs 54.5 million).

Good transactions were reported at Satyam Comp (Rs 40.8 million), Videsh Sanchar (Rs 33.3 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 25.4 million), Aptech (Rs 11.1 million), Contain Corp (Rs 8.4 million) in the 'B1' groups counter.

Among the major gainers were HDFC by Rs 25.25 to Rs 2933.75, and Indian Hotels improved by Rs 10.50 to Rs 598.50.

ITC registered the highest loss of Rs 32.25 to Rs 492.25, followed by ACC Rs 11.50 to Rs 1158.75, Century Textile by Rs 5.50 to Rs 736.75, Bajaj Auto by Rs 4.25 to Rs 548.25, Arvind Mills by Rs 2 to Rs 96.50, BHEL by Rs 14 to Rs 311, GE Shipping by Rs 1.25 to Rs 39.75, Reliance by Rs 5.50 to Rs 158, SBI by Rs 4.50 and Tata Steel by Re 0.25 to Rs 149.75.

UNI