The Hindu : Refinery stocks to the fore

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 09, 2004

Business

Business

Refinery stocks to the fore

MUMBAI, MARCH 8. Led by refinery and banking segments, share prices rallied further pushing up the Sensex by 54.84 points to close at 5935.19 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday on sustained buying by foreign funds as well as operators, mainly enthused by the overwhelming response to the ONGC equity offering.

Oil and refinery shares, particularly from public sector enterprises, were in the forefront, gaining sharply following positive response to the ONGC equity offering in the primary capital market, a dealer said, adding, ``It injected the much needed confidence among the investor fraternity''.

As a result, most of the refinery shares were in the limelight and notched up sharp gains on foreign institutional investors and local operators buying.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened on a promising note at 5899.26 and gradually moved upwards to the day's high of 5951.03 before concluding at 5935.19, a net gain of 0.93 per cent. The broad-based BSE-100 index also shot up by 60.84 points to end at 3124.95. Besides refinery and bank stocks, most of the other old-economy stocks also attracted fresh buying interests from retail investors. Petrochem giant and the top heavyweighted counter, Reliance, also was in good demand and aided the Sensex rise. Support also came from marked upsurge in other old-economy index-based shares like Grasim, L&T, ITC, Hindalco, Hero Honda, Ranbaxy, Tisco, Tata Power, ACC, GACL and Zee Telefilms.

On the contrary, software counters suffered a setback on profit-selling by institutional investors and operators as they have turned attention to old-economy blue-chips.

— PTI

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