Discounting high crude prices and a slowdown in FII activity, the Sensex staged a strong recovery of 2.52% during the week ended April 2, 2005 on the back of heavy purchases by investors, especially on the opening day of the new financial year and ahead of the quarterly results.The Sensex bounced from an intra-week low of 6,321.31 points touched on March 30 to end the week at 6,605.04 points as against the last weekend close of 6,442.87 points - netting a net gain of 162.17 points.The Sensex had declined about 411 points during the last two weeks.Positive FII activity on March 31 when they made net purchases of Rs 358.60 crore seemed to be the turning point for the market, which had been dragged continually by profit-booking during the past two weeks.FIIs have made net investments of Rs 7,518 crore in March. They made a record, single-day withdrawal of Rs 1,724 crore on March 29, which was largely attributed to ICICI Bank's ADS conversion offer.Domestic funds, too, made net purchases to the tune of Rs 1,541 crore in March.The market is expected to witness positive trends on expectations of encouraging fourth quarter results, which are likely to be announced from next week and also the low inflation figure. The Nifty spurted by 52.25 points to 2,067.65.Volume of business was relatively high on both the BSE and the NSE at Rs 10,318 crore and Rs 22,359 crore, respectively, when compared with last week's turnover of Rs 9,125 crore and Rs 18,448 crore, respectively.
