The Hindu : Business : Sensex crashes 112 points

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Saturday, Jun 12, 2004

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Business

Sensex crashes 112 points

MUMBAI, JUNE 11. In an extremely low volume, the Sensex today crashed by 112 points at close even as stocks led by the top heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) fell sharply on heavy sell-off triggered by reports about likely cut in customs duties on crude oil.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index, which witnessed listless activity for major part of the sessions, suddenly nosedived to the intra-day low of 4823.10 in the last one hour, before ending at 4832.71 against yesterday's close of 4944.64, a net fall of 111.93 points or 2.26 per cent.

Refinery stocks such as RIL, HPCL, BPCL, MRPL, Chennai Petroleum, Kochi Refinery, IOC, IPCL and others suffered a sharp setback as investors placed heavy sale orders in the counters fearing negative impact of likely reduction in custom duties on crude.

Any move to cut the customs duties on both crude and petroleum products would automatically reduce the protection enjoyed by domestic refining companies, market players said.

Shares of Tata companies, which initially saw a smart rally on news of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) deciding to go ahead with its long-awaited initial public offering, later reacted negatively and ended with substantial falls. TCS have investments in all the Tata group companies.

The market crashed in the absence of any worthwhile buying support even at the lower price levels with a plenty of sale orders by operators at the concluding session of the week, brokers said attributing the low volume to lack of participation by retail investors.

Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computer, Wipro, Zee Tele, SBI, MUL, ONGC, ICICI Bank, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Grasim, GACL and Bharti Tele were other major losers. The broad-based BSE-100 index dipped by 57.31 points to 2574.55.

In the specified group, 164 including 28 index-based counters registered sharp to moderate losses while 31 others finished with gains. The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted lower at 628.53 and 232.08 against 642.99 and 237.52 respectively. The BSE-500 dropped by 42.32 points to 1937.03 and the Dollex-30 ended down at 879.94 against 900.72.

PTI

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