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Pivotals take a dip after early rise; Nifty surges past 1,000-mark, but closes lower; 985.60

Pivotals, which rose moderately at the mid-session, declined sharply later on selling pressure from bull operators and ended marginally lower on the National Stock Exchange, which recorded the highest number of trades and shares today.

Mirroring the downtrend, the S&P CNX Nifty which opened higher at 1005.15 points and touched the high of 1016.30 points, moved down towards the close to 985.60 points, 4.45 points lower than the previous close of 990.95 point.

The S&P CNX Defty also eased by 3.15 points to 803.35 points. However, the CNX Nifty junior improved by 15.85 points to 1678.20 points while the S&P CNX 500 edged up by 4.36 points to 678.24 points. The CNX Midcap 200 also moved up by 5.98 points to 596.80 points.

The NSE witnessed the highest number of 366,135 trades and 126.57 million shares involved today. The total turnover was Rs 30.28 billion. About 557 securities advanced, 501 declined while 89 remained unchanged and 81 securities hit their price bands today.

Among the top S&P CNX Nifty gainers, IPCL registered the highest gain of 8.03 per cent to Rs 70.65, followed by Telco eight per cent to Rs 223.40, Asian Paints 6.17 per cent to Rs 318.50, Great Eastern Shipping 5.77 per cent to Rs 27.50 and ACC 4.36 per cent to Rs 1,250.

BHEL suffered the highest loss of 7.01 per cent to Rs 285. Mahindra and Mahindra declined by 4.46 per cent to Rs 193, Ranbaxy lost 4.09 per cent to Rs 328, Smithkline Beecham 4.07 per cent to Rs 584 and Nestle eased by 3.95 per cent to Rs 502.35.

ITC topped the turnover list with Rs 5.30 billion, followed by Satyam Computers (Rs 3.02 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 2.82 billion), SBI New (Rs 2.49 billion), Reliance (Rs 2.47 billion), Zee Telefilms (Rs 2.02 billion), Castrol (Rs 899.5 million), Telco (Rs 845.6 million) and MTNL (Rs 837.7 million).

The other actively traded counters were Tata Tea (Rs 758.3 million), Tisco (Rs 758 million), ACC (Rs 639.4 million), L&T (Rs 535.6 million), Dabur (Rs 528 million), HCL-HP (Rs 466.8 million), SquareD Software (Rs 323.7 million), Silverline (Rs 262.9 million) and Dr Reddy's (Rs 258.2 million).

The net investment by foreign institutional investors and domestic institutions were Rs 238.1 million and Rs 108.5 million respectively.

The wholesale debt market of the NSE witnessed trades worth Rs 4.09 billion. The 11.40 per cent government loan maturing in 2000 was traded for Rs 700 million at a weighted yield of 11.29 per cent. The 11.55 per cent government loan maturing in 2001 was traded for Rs 700 million at a weighted yield of 11.49 per cent.

The 14 per cent non-SLR bond of Indian Railway Finance Corporation maturing in 1999 was traded for Rs 100 million at a yield of 10.80 per cent. Commercial paper of Larsen and Toubro Limited maturing on April 23, 1999 was traded for Rs 100 million at a yield of 10.75 per cent. Total turnover in debentures was Rs 7.35 million.

UNI

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