COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Pivotals decline on profit-taking; Sensex down 8.4 points, 3046.29

Select equities declined moderately on profit-taking and selling pressure at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

According to marketmen, pivotals like ITC, Zee TV, Pentafour Software reported sharp decline on speculative selling pressure.

Infotech scrips witnessed a mixed trend, while pharmaceutical shares looked up on buying support from institutional investors.

Cement giant ACC, Ashok Leyland, Bharat Earth Movers, Blue Star, GAIL, Hitech Drilling, Lakme, PSI Holding hit their circuit bands and reported nearly eight per cent gains, analysts said and added that engineering and vehicle major Telco continue to be in the limelight as the market is expecting announcement of Indica's price tomorrow.

Reflecting the trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened at 3047.74 points, touched the day's high of 3066.60 points, fell to touch the day's low of 3014.61 points and finally ended at 3046.29 points, showing a net loss of 8.44 points as against the previous close of 3054.73 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index declined by 2.23 points to 1354.69 points from the previous close of 1356.92 points.

According to leading BSE brokers, the foreign institutional investors have made purchases in Telco, ITC, L&T, BHEL and ACC. Company circles' buying was reported at Tisco and Tata Chemicals's counters, they said.

Raman Parekh, a BSE broker said, "The market was generally strong. However, it witnessed a downtrend only because of last-minute selling pressure."

Most of the market players were busy in squaring up their positions on the NSE and it has affected market trend towards the end, another broker said.

Jignesh Shah, assistant vice-president (research) at Triumph International Finance said that sentiments seem to be cool with today's profit-taking selling pressure, but the market likely to remain firm during the few sessions in this week.

Meanwhile, Citicorp, CMC, ITC Bhadrachalam, VXL Info, Novartis, Glaxo were the other prominent gainers during the day.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices eased by 0.60 and 0.27 points to 312.52 and 313.12 points.

Total turnover on the BOLT system reported during the day was Rs 16.67 billion.

Satyam Computers registered highest turnover of Rs 3.07 billion, Pentafour Software Rs 2.23 billion, ITC Rs 2.13 billion.

Other actively traded counters were Castrol India (Rs 881.6 million), Telco (Rs 860 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 771.9 million), Reliance (Rs 709 million), Tisco (Rs 689.8 million), SBI (Rs 622.8 million), ACC (Rs 484.9 million), Tata Tea (Rs 481.2 million), L&T (Rs 273.9 million), Glaxo India (Rs 163.4 million), Infosys Technologies (Rs 145.4 million), BHEL (Rs 142.1 million).

UNI

Business news