The Hindu : Sensex drops 104 points in volatile trading

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 28, 2003

Business

Business

Sensex drops 104 points in volatile trading

MUMBAI OCT. 27. After raising hopes of a buoyant trend, stocks fell sharply and pushed the Sensex down by 104 points at close in an extremely volatile activity on the Stock Exchange, Mumbai, today on heavy selling pressure from domestic funds and winding up by operators.

Despite flow of encouraging corporate results and foreign investments, blue chip stocks reeled under heavy sell-off by private mutual funds as well as winding up by operators and ended with losses across the board.

The top heavyweight RIL suffered a sharp setback on selling partly triggered by news that the telecom regulator TRAI has recommended imposing penalty on Reliance Infocomm for offering mobility services almost similar to cellular phones to its wireless phone subscribers.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index opened steady at 4802.07 but later gradually moved downwards to below the 4700 mark to the day's low at 4689.09 before ending at 4698.28 as against last Saturday's (Muhurat) close of 4802.28, a net fall of 104 points or 2.17 per cent.

The Samvat 2060 had begun on a cheerful note on Saturday, inducing hopes that the strident rise at the fag end of last week would continue on strong economic fundamentals.

Operators, who have built up large positions in Futures and Options, resorted to heavy selling in a bid to square up their holdings before Thursday, the last day for the October contract of derivatives.

Local mutual funds once again, pressed heavy sales to mop up funds to meet the redemption pressure, brokers said.

The broad-based BSE-100 index tumbled by 55.69 points to 2384.61.

Meanwhile, the BSE has slapped revised margins on the basis of member-wise gross purchase and sales position on 76 scrips including banking, pharma and IT counters.

In the specified group, 163 including 24 index-based counters registered sharp to moderate losses while 31 others closed with gains.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted down at 590.41 and 216.80 against 604.01 and 221.84 respectively. The BSE-500 dipped by 41.33 points to 1804.52 and the Dollex-30 finished lower at 850.75 against 869.77.

The volume of business was relatively low at Rs. 1986.99 crores against Rs. 2306.03 last Friday. The Muhurat session on Saturday had recorded a turnover of Rs. 692.69 crores. Tisco remained the top traded share with the highest turnover of Rs. 229.93 crores followed by Tata Motors (Rs. 170.72 crores), Satyam Computer (Rs. 149.47 crores), RIL (Rs. 131.59 crores) and SBI (Rs. 118.73 crores).

PTI

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