ITC halts Sensex slide at weekend close

On the back of a hefty rise in ITC scrip, the Sensex managed to end the week in positive territory in a highly volatile conditions after a massive correction of 6.49% in the preceding two weeks.

In the week till January 22, the BSE index gyrated in a range of 6267.97 and 6087.55 and ended the week marginally higher at 6183.24 over the last weekend's close of 6173.82, a net gain of 9.42 points or 0.15%.

The Sensex had fallen by about 429 points during the last two weeks leaving behind a strong optimism of a long rally.

ITC, which has a weightage of 11.30% in Sensex, rose by an impressive 123.75 points, bolstered by the apex court ruling that state governments have no legislative competence to impose luxury tax on goods, including cigarettes and gutkas.

Negative activity by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) coupled with worries over more aggressive federal rate hike, put pressure on the bourses.

The market mover FIIs, which have slowed down activity in the new calendar year, reported net sales of Rs 226 crore in the first three trading sessions. Similarly, domestic financial institutions too were sellers to the tune of Rs 68.62 crore in the same period.

ICICI Bank, Cipla, Tata Steel, ACC, Tata Chem and REL announced better-than-expected quarterly results while Bajaj Auto, Ranbaxy and a few others reported disappointing working.

The excellent growth in net profits of RIL and Wipro might change the trend on the bourses when it opens for trading on January 24. RIL beat the market projections recording a 52% rise in the net profit while Wipro's net soared by 56% in the third quarter.

However, majority of the indices showed moderate losses. The broad-based BSE-100 index eased by 6.57 points to end the week at 3324.44 from last weekend's close of 3331.01.

The BSE-200 index and the Dollex-200 were quoted sharply down at 817.18 and 310.76 at the weekend compared to previous weekend's close of 826.03 and 313.63 respectively.

The BSE-500 index dropped further by 27.69 points to end the week at 2568.44 from last weekend's close of 2596.13, while the Dollex-30 finished the week modestly up at 1159.53 from 1155.92 at the last weekend.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the S&P CNX Nifty and the S&P CNX Defty moved down by 5.80 points and 4.55 points to end the week at 1925.30 and 1525.90 as against last weekend's close of 1931.10 and 1530.45 respectively. The CNX Nifty Junior dropped by 45.95 points to conclude the week at 4099.70 from 4145.65 at the previous weekend.

The total volume of business on the BSE and NSE was low at Rs 8,274 crore and Rs 18,751 crore compared to last week's turnover of Rs 11,238 crore and Rs 25,786 crore respectively.