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Sensex safe from Asian fall effect, rises 32 points, 2918.89

Pivotals firmed up further on the moderate buying support from foreign and domestic institutional investors on the Bombay Stock Exchange today, pushing up the Sensex above 2900 mark after gaining 32 points.

The market remained unaffected by the fresh fall in the Asian markets and political crisis in Malaysia. Asian markets were lower in early trading as investors dumped regional stocks amid political and economic uncertainty in Malaysia, where the reform minded finance minister Anwar Ibrahim was sacked.

The 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened on a steady note at 2885.30, surpassing the psychological barrier of 2900 and touched the day's high of 2921.34 points, fell to touch day's low of 2879.13 points and finally ended at 2918.89 points, showing a net gain of 31.98 points against the previous close of 2886.91 points.

According to leading BSE brokers, the foreign institutional investors bought considerable amount of shares of BSES and Telco while the ITC found good buying support from Calcutta-based operators. The domestic leaders, including Life Insurance Corporation of India, General Insurance Corporation and Unit Trust of India also made moderate purchases in the index-based scrips.

The broad-based BSE-100 index gained by 11.59 points to 1302.35 points against the previous close of 1290.76 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices also closed higher by 1.81 and 0.62 points to 302.19 and 118.21 points against Wednesday's close of 300.38 and 117.59 points respectively.

Among the gainers, market leader ITC registered a smart gain of 16.75 points to 637.25, Petrochem giant Reliance added Re 1 to Rs 106, Castrol India Rs 11.75 to Rs 572.50, L&T looked up by Rs 0.10 to Rs 170.80, Gujarat Ambuja Rs 1.90 to Rs 182.90, BHEL up by Rs 9.50 to Rs 238.50, Zee Telefilm gained by Rs 10.85 to Rs 566.50, State Bank of India by Rs 1.40 to Rs 183.30 and Videocon International by Rs 1.80 to Rs 54.35.

The infotech shares found place in the losers list with the Pentafour Software falling by Rs 3 to Rs 592, Satyam Computers dropped by Rs 1.75 to Rs 461.75, Tata Tea down by Rs 2.20 to Rs 260, Infosys Tech declined by Rs 7.25 to Rs 2,465 and NIIT by Rs 2.25 to Rs 1,535.

UNI