Equities staged a smart late rally on hectic bear covering and fresh support from financial institutions (FIs) on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) yesterday.
Brokers said after initial hesitancy, activity had picked up on covering up short positions as today is the last day of the current settlement. Most of the transactions were executed by FIs and speculators who were buyers at lower levels.
Reflecting the activity, the BSE sensitive index opened lower at 3686.37 and dropped to a low of 3659.27 on bear pressure but later surged up to 3734.84 on hectic support and closed at 3732.05 as against the previous close of 3689.07, with a net gain of 42.98 points.
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The BSE-100 index also rose 13.65 points to 1611.25 from 1597.60. The BSE-200 and Dollex were quoted higher at 358.54 and 166.27 as compared to the previous close of 355.96 and 165.07 respectively. FIs, brokers and banks were reported to have made good purchases of Tisco, Telco, SBI (new) and Reliance Industries, while foreign institutional investors (FIIs) purchased good lot of Oriental Bank shares. However, there was more buying activity from domestic institutions who were booking profits at higher levels while selling was limited. Cash scrips also evoked fresh support from speculators in shares with good fundamentals. Initially, the market ruled weak, but as the session progressed brisk allround support lifted prices to close with gains at the bulges. The total turnover on the screen based trading system BOLT reported during the day was Rs 762.36 crore. The State Bank of India stood first by registering highest turnover of Rs 319.66 crore, followed by Reliance Rs 180.82 crore, ITC Rs 90,16 crore, Tisco Rs
51.53 crore, and Telco Rs 10.54 crore. Hectic activity was also observed in other counters like ACC Rs 9.41 crore, L&T Rs 9.32 crore, IPCL Rs 8.52 crore, MTNL Rs 7.87 crore and Hind Lever Rs 7.12 crore.