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Sensex crashes 134 points to go below 4000 mark

Despite selective buying support from the domestic institutions, equity prices suffered heavy setback on sustained selling pressure from foreign institutional investors on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday.

Asian stock exchanges also remained subdued as investors retreated to the sidelines ahead of the scheduled release on Friday of a series of economic data, including industrial production figures, the consumer price index, and unemployment, said a source. This was reflected in the Indian capital market, he added.

The FIIs' daily turnover in the Indian stock exchange is about Rs 10 million. If they do not invest, the market would be badly affected, a leading broker said, and added that domestic institutions like Unit Trust of India bought non-convertible debentures, revealing their lack of interest in buying equity.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensex (30 scrips) dropped below psychological barrier of 4000 mark. It opened slightly lower at 4093.76 points against the previous close. It was hovering at the same level till the afternoon session. Due to heavy selling pressure from bull operators and FIIs, it crashed to 3960.34 points before recovering, and closed to 3963.15 points as against its previous close of 4097.56 points, suffering a loss of 134.41 points.

The BSE-100 index closed at 1732.78 points over the last trading day's close of 1787.71 points, losing 54.94 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices declined by 12.63 and 05.79 points to 389.05 and 178.14 points as compared to Wednesday's close of 401.68 and 183.93 points respectively.

The FIIs sold considerable amount of pivotals like Tisco, State Bank, Colgate, Castrol, RIL and other shares.

The total turnover increased by Rs 1.46 billion to Rs 8.13 billion as compared to the previous day's total turnover of Rs 6.67 million, involving 31.8 million shares. Out of 6,748 scrips, a total number of 1,855 scrips were traded.

The volume of the business was led by tobacco giant ITC registering Rs 2.46 billion worth of transactions, followed by RIL Rs 1.54 billion, SBI Rs 800.1 million, Tata Tea Rs 740.3 million, Tisco Rs 293.1 million, Castrol Rs 232.9 million, Telco Rs 168.2 million, Guj Amb Cement Rs 104.7 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 95.6 million, MTNL Rs 95 million, ACC Rs 83 million, L&T Rs 78.8 million, Hind Petrol Rs 65.9 million and BHEL Rs 63 million in the specified counters.

Good transactions were observed at Bank of India, Satyam Comp, Software Sol, NIIT, UTI-M Growth, Tata Infotech, Mukand, ITW Signode, Piramal Healthcare, DIG Equip, Reliance Pet, Infosys Tech, Wockhardt and Wipro in 'B1' counters.

National Stock Exchange

Pivotal prices declined moderately on sustained selling pressure from bull operators and financial institutions on the National Stock Exchange on Thursday.

The NSE-50 index opened steady at 1168.40 points and touched the day's low of 1132.25 points before closing at 1134.65 points as against its previous close of 1168.40 points, suffering a loss of 33.75 points.

The midcap index closed at 1275.75 points over the last trading day's close of 1305.90 points, losing 30.15 points. The total turnover was Rs 18.5 billion, involving 64.6 million shares.

The major gainers were HDFC Bank, Grasim, TVS Suzuki and losers were IFCI Limited, Thermax, Essar Steel, IDBI and Larsen and Toubro.

Hectic trading was witnessed at the ITC limited (Rs 7.14 billion), RIL (Rs 2.64 billion), Tata Tea (Rs 2.51 billion), SBI-N (Rs 1.11 billion), Tisco (Rs 571 million), Colgate (Rs 505.1 million), ACC (Rs 455.9 million), L&T (Rs 313 million), Guj Amb Cement (Rs 309.2 million), Telco (Rs 304.3 million), BHEL (Rs 253 million), Castrol (Rs 215.6 million), Hind Lever (Rs 142.8 million), MTNL (Rs 131.5 million), BSES (Rs 127.7 million), Rel Capital (Rs 127.2 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 89.6 million), Glaxo (Rs 77.4 million), IFCI (59.6 million), BPL (Rs 58.3 million), Bank of India (Rs 58.3 million), Dr Reddy (Rs 56.3 million), Satyam Comp (Rs 49.2 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 44.2 million) and Proctor & Gamble (Rs 40.3 million) counters.

UNI