Speculatives moved in a narrow range and declined marginally in the absence of support from financial institutions (FIs) and general investors on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) yesterday.
Brokers said speculative activity was low while some scrips in the group B-1 such as Nelco, BoB, Hind Zinc and ITC, attracted foreign institutional investors (FIIs). FIs gave support in some power generating scrips such as Tata Power, BSES and Andhra Valley which looked up moderately. Reliance Industries shares were in demand on interested buying.
They said activity was partly affected by the end of account considerations on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). Reflecting the trend, the market opened on a better note with the BSE sensitive index at 3797.46 and touched a high of 3813.06 but later dropped to a low of 3765.48 and closed at 3795.17, showing a loss of 2.95 points from the previous close of 3798.12. The BSE-100 declined by 3.02 points to close at 1638.50 from 1641.52 previously. The BSE-200 closed at 346.36 and the Dollex at 169.07 from 364.66 and 169.35 respectively. Among the weak spots were ACC, Grasim, Gujarat Ambuja, Hind Lever, Telco, Castrol, HDFC and Siemens. Shares of Bhel, Ind Hotel, Reliance, Tata Power, SmithKline, Sterlite and Oriental Bank firmed up on speculative support.
Shares opened on a better note and remained firmer in the first session but later selling pressure wiped out the gains and the session closed with small variations on either side. However, losses outnumbered gains.
The total was Rs 721.57 crore. SBI topped the list registering Rs 244.89 crore, followed by Reliance Rs 216.64 crore, ITC Rs 65.65 crore, Tisco Rs 29.71 crore and MTNL Rs 16.71 crore. Hectic activity was also seen in Telco Rs 12.04 crore, Castrol India Rs 11.88 crore and IPCL Rs 11.31 crore.
