The stock markets witnessed a further slide yesterday, with the NSE 50 Index falling by 11.98 points following a total lack of fresh buying support from foreign institutional investors and domestic financial institutions.
Trading was affected largely due to reports of the Delhi High Court rejecting the plea for anticipatory bail by former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao.
The sentiment on the National Stock Exchange weakened as prices of pivotals declined towards the closing of the trading session. The NSE 50 Index (Nifty) opened at 970.76, touched a high of 970.89 before reaching a low of 955.60 to close at 959.31, compared to the previous close of 971.29.
The trading activity was weak like in the Bombay Stock Exchange, where the broker presence was thin on account of `Anant-Chaturthi'. The net traded value on the NSE was Rs 756.02 crore and the net traded quantity was 392.78 lakh shares and the number of trades were 79,981. According to a leading dealer on the NSE, the market is likely to witness a downward trend in the coming days until there is some news to cheer the broking community. Hectic activity was witnessed in the leading stocks like the SBI, Reliance Industries, ITC, IPCL and ACC.
The SBI stock fell from Rs 264.40 levels to Rs 260. One of the key stocks to pull down was IPCL which fell by nearly 6 per cent to Rs 116.05 on the NSE, against an opening of Rs 121, compared to a previous close of 122.35. The overall traded turnover for SBI stood at Rs 356.84 crore, followed by Tisco as a distant second, with a Rs 92.34 crore turnover, followed by Reliance with Rs 91.25 crore. The top five gainers were Penacea Biotech (10 per cent), P I Industries (10 per cent), Goldcrest Finance (9.27 per cent), Saurashtra Paper (9.20 per cent) and Norben Tea (9.09 per cent).