The Hindu : Business : Sensex drops 101 points

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 04, 2006

Business

Business

Sensex drops 101 points

Sharp decline in FII inflows

MUMBAI: Stocks continued their downslide for the third straight day, pulling the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex down by another 101 points to close at 9742.58 in low volume trade largely due to lack of worthwhile buying support at higher levels amid profit taking from investors.

The volume of business has fallen sharply in the last couple of days following a sharp decline in foreign institutional investment inflows as well as squaring up activity by operators and retailers. Sentiment was adversely affected by depressed trend in Asian markets.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index (Sensex) opened weak at 9834.97 and gradually moved downwards to the intra-day low of 9713.51 before closing at 9742.58 against Thursday's close of 9843.87, a net loss of 101.29 points or 1.03 per cent.

The Sensex has taken a downturn after nearing the 10,000-mark on February 1, when it hit an all-time peak of 9993.92 and fell back by over 251 points or 2.51 per cent in the last three sessions. Market players seemed to have adopted a cautious approach with the prices at dizzy heights and foreign institutional investors generally pulling out from the Futures segment, brokers said. The FIIs reportedly made withdrawals of over Rs. 525 crore from the futures segment on February 1 while pumping in Rs. 508 crore in the cash on the same day.

In Asian markets, the Nikkei ended down by 50.91 points, the Hang Seng by 261.96 points, the Kospi by 40.94 points and the Singapore ST by 9.67 points. — PTI

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