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Sensex declines marginally

Select equity prices suffered a moderate setback on the opening day of weekly settlement as the Sensex declined by 12.41 points following profit booking by the domestic institutional investors and absence of buying support from foreign institutional investors on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday.

The market opened with selling pressure from common investors and institutional investors. However, in the mid-trading session, domestic institutions including the Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation, and General Insurance Corporation, coupled with FIIs, bought considerable amount of index-based shares which drifted the Sensex higher, leading brokers said.

When the Sensex approached 4000 mark, the brokers started booking their profits at the high level, which made the Sensex crash along with the blue chip prices. However, at the fag end, the FIIs invested in the index-based counters which helped the equity prices recover to be quoted slightly lower than the previous day's close.

Resuming on a weak note, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) opened lower at 3918.05 points, touched day's high of 3964.03 points, low of 3908.84 points, before closing down to 3912.83 points, suffering a loss of 12.41 points as against the previous trading day's close of 3925.24 points.

The broadbased BSE National Index (100 scrips) finished slightly below 1700 mark to 1699.74 points, losing 03.89 points over the last trading day's close of 1703.63 points.

However, the BSE-200 and dollex indices settled down marginally higher at 380.95 and 175.30 points as compared to last week's close of 380.01 and 174.67 points respectively.

The BSE authorities on Monday declared a payout in respect of a B1 and B2 group securities for the settlement period ending September 19.

The total turnover was Rs 9.2 billion involving 30.7 shares. Out of 6,740 scrips, a total number of 1,730 scrips were traded.

Business was led by tobacco giant ITC with a total turnover of Rs 3 billion, followed by Reliance Industries Rs 2.5 billion, SBI Rs 970.4 million, Tata Tea Rs 881.4 million, Castrol Rs 215.1 million, TISCO Rs 175.6 million, BHEL Rs 120.1 million, TELCO Rs 107.3 million, ACC Rs 92.2 million, Hind Lever Rs 71 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 70.8 million, Hero Honda Rs 64.5 million, L&T Rs 47.2 million, HDFC Rs 43.5 million and Reliance Capital Rs 41.6 million in the specified counters.

Good transactions were observed at Satyam Comp, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Infosys Tech, Digital Equip, Wipro, Aptech, Software Sol, HDFC Bank, Tata Infotech, Madras Cement, NIIT, ICI India, Nicholas Pir and Ind Shaving at the 'B1' counters.

UNI