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ITC sale pushes Sensex down by 76 points

The FIIs sold about 2.5 million ITC shares which adversely affected the frontline equities. However, domestic institutions, including Unit Trust of India, continued with its buying support and arrested the heavy downfall in the capital market.

Market sources said that being the last day of the current settlement cycle at National Stock Exchange, bull operators were busy squaring up their positions. The midterm poll in the country has made investors wary from investing in the capital market, they added.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram had declared that the country's industrial policy should be reformed to compete with other countries. This was seen by marketmen as a positive step.

The weakening of the Indian rupee against US dollar in the interbank foreign exchange market demoralised the sentiments of FIIs, dealers said.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) opened nearly steady at 3469.92 points, and due to moderate buying support from domestic financial institutions, it went up to 3485.01 points. It then touched a day's low of 3367.89 points, and finally recovered and closed at 3391.59 points suffering a loss of 76.60 points as against its previous close of 3468.19 points.

The BSE National Index (100 scrips) also dropped below 1500 mark and closed at 1474.21 points over yesterday's close of 1502.96 points losing 28.75 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices declined by 05.76 and 02.96 points to 331.40 and 141.44 points as compared to last trading day's close of 337.16 and 144.30 points respectively.

ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 7.5 billion out of Rs 13 billion. Others scrips which recorded good turnovers were Reliance Industries Rs 1.7 billion, SBI Rs 953.3 million, Tata Tea Rs 615.1 million, Castrol Rs 526.4 million, Ranbaxy Rs 168.4 million, ACC Rs 153.8 million, TELCO Rs 127.8 million, TISCO Rs 125.8 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 109.7 million, MTNL Rs 105.2 million and Hind Lever Rs 91.8 million in the specified counters.

Good transaction were witnessed at Corporation Bank Rs 84.8 million, Infosys Tech Rs 71.6 million, Nat Alum Co Rs 9.4, Saurash Cem Rs 7.9 million, Satyam Comp Rs 0.67 million, Flex Indus Rs 0.51 million, Aptech Rs 3.1 million at the non-specified counters.

UNI