COMMENTARY
INTERVIEW
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Sensex gains 9.61 points; despite NSE closure, trade volume plunges

After a weak start, pivotals on Monday registered moderate gains on the Bombay Stock Exchange following buying support from domestic institutional investors and upcountry operators.

However, business volume on the BSE dropped sharply to Rs 5.9 billion against Friday's turnover of Rs 9.7 billion. This was in complete contrast to the expectations of market analysts, who had felt that the business volume will see a steep increase due to the closure of trading on the National Stock Exchange following the failure of its satellite connection.

Reflecting the trend, the BSE Sensitive Index opened at 3850.35 points, touched the day's high of 3862.17, declined to the day's low of 3829.05 points, and ended at 3857.34 points, showing a net gain of 9.61 points over the previous close of 3847.73 points.

Similarly, the BSE-100 index gained by 4.08 points to 1673.54 points against the previous close of 1669.46 points.

The BSE-200 and dollex closed higher by 1.01 and 0.47 points over Friday's close of 373.50 and 171.92 points respectively.

Local institutional investors bought 100,000 shares of State Bank while Calcutta-based operators have purchased similar amount of shares of Tata Tea, marketmen said.

ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 1.5 billion, followed by Reliance Rs 1.4 billion, Tata Tea Rs 853.3 million, SBI Rs 453.9 million and Hind Lever Rs 104.9 million.

Hectic activity was also observed at the other counters like TELCO Rs 98.4 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 94.9 million, ACC Rs 90.1 million, Castrol Rs 89.9 million, MTNL Rs 84.1 million, L&T Rs 82.5 million, TISCO Rs 69.8 million, Colgate Rs 46.1 million, BHEL Rs 41.3 million and Guj Ambuja Rs 30.2 million.

UNI