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Nikkei blues, UTI fears hurt Sensex; down 40 points, 2832.03

Pivotals crashed on the Bombay Stock Exchange today for the second consecutive day following heavy selling pressure from foreign institutional investors and bear speculators, bringing the BSE Sensex down by over 61 points to close at 2811.31 points.

According to leading BSE brokers, the Unit Trust of India fiasco continued to affect the market sentiments on the country's premier bourse. The FIIs pressed sales in the pivotals' counters while the UTI reportedly made small purchases.

A fresh fall in the world stock markets mainly at Tokyo, Hongkong and discouraging trend at the London Stock Exchange also aided the downtrend here, said another broker.

The BSE today announced the inclusion of four top traded scrips Infosys Technologies, NIIT, Castrol and Novartis in the Sensex. However, the announcement also failed to bring any cheer to the market.

Reflecting the bearish phase, the 30-scrip Sensex opened at 2849.10 points, touched day's high of 2865.24 points, fell to touch day's low of 2785.41 and finally ended at 2832.03 points, showing a net loss of 40.45 points over the previous close of 2872.48 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also declined by 17.77 points from the previous close of 1283.43 points.

According to market sources, the Nikkei average stock index at Tokyo fell sharply by 312.22 points to 13242.79 points while the Hang Seng index at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange dropped by 18.5 points to 9008.83 points.

The FTSE Index of London registered a marginal recovery at 5020.80 points but the trend was not encouraging, dealers pointed out.

According to analysts at the SVS Securities, the market will continue to exhibit the subdued trend for next few days and the Samvat 2054 is likely to end on a weak note following lack of positive factors, he said.

The BSE-100 closed lower by 17.77 points at 1265.66 points from the previous close of 1283.43. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices eased by 4.14 and 1.60 points to 296.19 and 116.44 points from the previous close of 300.33 and 118.04 points respectively.

UNI