COMMENTARY
INTERVIEW
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Sensex falls by 58 points to go below 3900 mark

The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex, after opening on a better note on Friday, drifted below the 3900 marks, registering an intraday low of 57.78 points in the wake of heavy bull liquidation by the local operators and the late short-covering by the upcountry operators who turned strong sellers on the last day of badla trading.

According to marketmen, the market opened on a better note compared to Wednesday's closing and firmed up further following the foreign institutional investors' buying support on the Bajaj Auto scrip, witnessing an almost steady trend till the midsession.

During the second session of the day, local operators started covering up their positions which weakened the position of major scrips like Tata tea, Mahindra and Mahindra, Castrol and Reliance, resulting in a steep fall of the Sensex. Tobacco giant ITC was the only scrip which maintained its high position.

Share prices encountered selling pressure due to the late short-covering by the operators as Friday is the last day of the weekly settlement of badla trading, and secondly as the National Stock Exchange had to remain close due to the major snag developed by the INSAT-2D, which also caused bull liquidation at the BSE, marketmen said.

The NSE has said that trading might resume on Monday but it is not certain.

The marketmen said that the trading at BSE was also affected as the Calcutta Stock Exchange will now remain closed for about seven to eight days on account of Durga Puja for which the upcountry operators resulted in major sellers for the day.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensitive Index opened higher at 3907.22 points, firmed up to touch the day's high of 3923.26 points, dipped below the psychological barrier of 3900 to 3833.92 points, and finally closed lower at 3847.73 points compared to Wednesday's close of 3905.51, suffering a loss of 57.78 points.

Similarly, the BSE-100 also slid moderately by 23.70 points to 1669.46 over its previous day's close of 1693.16 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices too suffered a loss of 5.54 and 2.55 points respectively to close at 373.50 and 171.92 points compared to the previous close of 379.04 and 174.47 points.

Meanwhile, the total turnover on the screen-based trading system was Rs 9.7 billion out of 6,742 scrips , a total number of 1,957 scrips were traded on the system.

The tobacco giant ITC maintained its lead on the volume of business by registering a total turnover of Rs 3.1 billion, followed by Reliance Rs 2..8 billion, SBI Rs 824.2 million, Tata Tea Rs 697.7 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 156.2 million, TELCO Rs 155 million, Castrol Rs 154.3 million, TISCO Rs 125.9 million, BHEL Rs 88.5 million, Larsen and Toubro Rs 86.8 million, Hind Lever Rs 71.7 million, MTNL Rs 70.7 million and ACC Rs 68.8 million in the specified counters.

Good transactions were also observed at Satyam Comp, ICICI Bank, Videsh Sanch, Kodak India, Mico, Ind Shaving, Dig Equip, Infosys Tech, Shipping Cor, Bank of India, Cyanamid, Nicholas Pir, Wockhardt, Ingersoll and Tata Infotech.

UNI