Ceding ground

STOCKS REPORT

Small-cap and mid-cap counters continued to attract attention on a lacklustre trading day. Select buying in blue chips helped the market recover from the intra-day low but the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex closed in the negative territory. A lack of strong impetus is playing spoilsport, brokers said.

Technology, oil and PSU counters were among the biggest losers on Friday while select consumer durables and FMCG scrips witnessed buying attention.

The BSE Sensex hit a high of 6463.14 and a low of 6418.78 in intra-day trades before finally closing at 6451.54 points, down 5.28 points (0.08 per cent) from its previous close. The BSE small-cap index was up 1.68 per cent and the mid-cap index gained 0.39 per cent.

A dealer from K G Vora Securities said, "Participation is very low but some big block deals helped increase volumes on Friday. The much awaited results season has failed to enthuse the investors and they await some fresh impetus."

The monsoon will now be closely watched, he added. Among frontline counters, 16 scrips out of the 30-scrip Sensex basket closed higher. The breadth of the market was also positive, with gainers outpacing losers 17:8 in the BSE. Volumes were higher than on Thursday, with a turnover of Rs 2,406.44 crore recorded on the BSE and Rs 3,847.01 crore on the NSE.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net sellers of Indian shares worth Rs 44.60 crore on Thursday while domestic mutual funds were net buyers to the tune of Rs 162.70 crore.

HDFC was the biggest gainer in the Sensex basket, rising 2.43 per cent to close at Rs 768.20, Cipla was up 1.86 per cent to Rs 282.20, Dr Reddy's gained 1.14 per cent to Rs 665.45, Zee Telefilms was up 1.06 per cent to Rs 157.50 and BHEL was up 0.95 per cent to Rs 835.05.

Satyam counter was the biggest loser in the Sensex basket, down 1.71 per cent to Rs 423.50, Bharti Tele-Ventures was down 1.64 per cent to Rs 215.65, Infosys Technologies fell 1.42 per cent to Rs 2,031.65, Hero Honda was down 1.19 per cent to Rs 545.70 and Wipro fell 1.04 per cent to Rs 636.05.