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Sensex fall by 69 points

Speculative prices suffered a major setback on lack of buying support from foreign institutional investors and higher-level profit-taking by the domestic institutions on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

"The heavy bull liquidation witnessed in the National Stock Exchange found reflection in the BSE too," leading brokers said.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE sensitive index opened at 3703.84 points, and remained there for quite some time. Later, due to heavy selling pressure and lack of demand, it dropped to 3623.93 before closing at 3637.71 points, thus suffering a net loss of 69.08 points as against its previous close at 3706.79.

The broadbased BSE-100 index dropped below the 1600 mark. It closed at 1577.79, losing 26.55 points over the previous close of 1604.34.

The BSE-200 and dollex indices finished at 352.20 and 149.39 points as compared to the last working day's close of 357.28 and 151.71 points respectively.

Market sources said the downtrend will continue for a couple of days as most of the brokers are away on year-end holidays.

The total turnover on screen-based trading was Rs 7.91 billion involving 34.6 million shares. Of the total 6,867 scrips sold, 1,629 were traded on the bolt system.

The ITC continued with the highest volume of trade -- worth Rs 2.03 billion. It was followed by Tata Tea (Rs 987.7 million), SBI (Rs 962.1 million), Telco (Rs 730.8 million), RIL (Rs 639.7 million), Castrol (Rs 464.1 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 168.8 million), Hind Lever (Rs 161.4 million), ACC (Rs 158.8 million), Tisco (Rs 153.6 million), MTNL (Rs 146.9 million), L&T (Rs 134.8 million) and Colgate (Rs 109.4 million) in specified counters.

Hectic trading was observed at LML Limited (Rs 27.4 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 14.4 million), Essel Packin (Rs 14.3 million), Balrampur Ch (Rs 11.6 million) and Flex Indus (Rs 9.9 million) at the 'B' counters.

UNI