COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
SPECIALS
CHAT
ARCHIVES

Reliance raids neutralise early gains; Sensex dips 38 points, 2964.87

After opening on a firm note, pivotals declined sharply on heavy speculative selling spree towards the end due to reports that the Central Bureau of Investigation has raided the premises of Reliance Industries Limited today.

The market was steady till 1400 hours and Reliance and Tisco scrips were in the limelight as the Foreign Institutional Investors picked up a big lot of RIL while some of the institutional investors reported moderate purchases in Tisco, dealers said.

Tisco witnessed good buying activity today mainly on the report that the Tisco managing director is scheduled to make a presentation on company performance to the UTI, dealers said.

RIL scrip opened at Rs 121 at the BSE touched the high of Rs 123.80 and closed lower at Rs 119.60, showing a net loss of Rs 1.70 from the previous close of Rs 121.30.

RIL witnessed high business volume on both the BSE and the National Stock Exchange with about 12.74 million shares changing hands at the BSE and 18.79 million shares on the NSE, dealers said.

Besides RIL, the FIIs bought Nestle, Dr Reddy's and Tisco, leading BSE brokers said.

Reflecting the trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensitive Index opened at 3010.73 points, touched the day's high of 3015.82, fell below the psychological barrier of 3000 and touched the day's low of 2964.87 and remained unchanged till close, showing a net loss of 38.38 points from the previous close of 3003.25 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index declined by 15.78 points to 1,323.71 points as against the previous close of 1,339.49 points.

Total turnover on the BSE came down to Rs 8.86 billion from yesterday's turnover of Rs 9.33 billion.

Reliance topped the list of turnover by registering Rs 1.54 billion, followed by ITC Rs 774.2 million, SBI Rs 636.7 million, Satyam Computers Rs 615.7 million and Pentafour Software Rs 505.4 million.

Other actively trades counters were Telco (Rs 416.3 million), Tisco (Rs 368.3 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 318.1 million), L&T (Rs 226 million), ACC (Rs 225.1 million), MTNL (Rs 174.3 million), BHEL (Rs 161.8 million), Tata Tea (Rs 153.7 million), Castrol India (Rs 142 million) and Dr Reddy's (Rs 131.8 million).

The foreign institutional investors and domestic institutional investors turned net buyers today.

The FIIs net buying stood at Rs 220 million while domestic institutional investors' stood at Rs 100 million, market sources said.

Among the issues, ACC was down by Rs 6 to Rs 1032, Asian Hotels Rs 1.20 to Rs 148, Bajaj Auto Rs 2.50 to Rs 559.25, BHEL Rs 2.50 to Rs 264.50, BSES Rs 1.50 to Rs 155.90, Cadbury's Rs 2 to Rs 388, Castrol Rs 10 to Rs 645, Dr Reddy's Rs 4.75 to Rs 451, Glaxo Rs 15.25 to Rs 558, Hindustan Lever Rs 6 to Rs 1601, ITC Hotels Rs 13.75 to Rs 713.25, Mahindra and Mahindra Rs 11.60 to Rs 166.10, MTNL Rs 5.70 to Rs 187.10, NIIT Rs 3.25 to Rs 1388.75, SBI Rs 4.30 to Rs 162.

Tisco earned Rs 1.55 to move up to Rs 96.45 from the previous close of Rs 94.90.

UNI

Business news