The Hindu : PSE stocks bear the brunt of selling

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 18, 2003

Business

Business

PSE stocks bear the brunt of selling

MUMBAI SEPT. 17. Equities gave up early gains and even dropped sharply pushing the Sensex to end 39 points lower in volatile activity on the Stock Exchange, Mumbai, today due to late sell-off by retailers as well as operators.

Public sector enterprises stocks bore the brunt of selling pressure throughout and finished with sharp losses for the second consecutive day as a result of the apex court's directive to get Parliament approval for privatising the oil majors.

Initially, the BSE benchmark 30-share index rallied past 4300-level to the intra-day high at 4330.85 on selective purchases by investors. It later fell sharply to end at 4235.35 against 4274.75, netting a fall of 39.40 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index nosedived by 52.13 points to 2177.57.

Brokers attributed the sudden selling spree to the absence of foreign institutional investors and domestic financial institutions, which were the prime driving force behind the overnight price rally.

Sensing trouble as foreign funds slowed down their activity, retail investors and operators booked profits in several blue chip counters at the prevailing higher levels during the fag end of the session, brokers said.

HPCL, BPCL, SCI, STC India, ONGC, IOC, BEL, Bharat Forge, Dredging Corporation, EIL, IBP and CCI suffered sharp setbacks.

Old economy stocks such as Grasim, RIL, HLL, ACC, BSES, ITC, HDFC, L&T, Ranbaxy, SBI, Tata Motors and Tisco too showed substantial losses.

Had it not been for remarkable gains recorded by Infosys Technologies, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto, BHEL and a few others, the Sensex would have closed with a hefty fall.

In the specified group, 120 including 23 index-based scrips registered sharp to moderate losses while 74 others closed with gains.

Depicting continuous slide, the BSE-PSE Index dropped by 129.17 points or 4.52 per cent to end at 2728.17 against 2857.34.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted lower at 540.64 and 195.93 against 552.73 and 200.71 respectively. The BSE-500 moved down by 32.61 points to 1651.53 and the Dollex-30 to 756.90 from 765.45.

The total volume of business was relatively low at Rs. 2250.53 crores against Rs. 2444.46 crores.

Infosys were the top traded scrip with a turnover of Rs. 216.06 crores followed by HPCL (Rs. 182.58 crores), Satyam Computer (Rs. 157.15 crores), RIL (Rs. 138.28 crores) and Tisco (Rs. 132.22 crores).

PTI

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