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Sensex crashes 108 points over fear of petroleum products hike

The 30-scrip Sensex tumbled 108.49 points on the fear of hike in the petroleum prices and heavy depreciation in the Indian rupee against the US dollar, coupled with selling pressure from market players, foreign institutional investors on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday.

Being a bank holiday on account of the Parsi New Year, attendance in the market was low. Domestic institutional investors were wary of making fresh investments in the capital markets, whereas. FIIs sold considerable amount of TISCO, TELCO, Reliance Industries and State Bank of India shares, market sources said.

The market opened on a weak note due to heavy bull liquidation on the last day of the current settlement cycle, as most of the brokers were busy squaring up their positions, leading brokers said, adding that market players were actively selling blue chip scrips which pushed the Sensex down.

Reflecting the downward trend, the BSE sensitive index opened lower at 4132.99 points, touched a day's high of 4144.17 points, a low of 4037.31 points before closing at 4047.67 points against its previous close of 4156.16, points suffering a loss of 108.49 points.

The BSE-100 index dropped below the 1800 mark to close at 1769.29 points over Thursday's close of 1814.58 points, losing 45.29 points.

The BSE-200 and dollex indices declined by 09.32 and 04.20 points to 397.55 and 183.45 points as compared to the previous close of 406.87 and 187.75 points respectively.

The heavy weighted scrips like ACC decreased by Rs 36 to Rs 1442/1443, TELCO came down by Rs 18 to Rs 342/343, Reliance Industries by Rs 11 to Rs 347/348, TISCO drifted lower by Rs 4 to Rs 191/192 and SBI eased by Rs 6 to Rs 311/312.

The total turnover on the screen-based trading system was Rs 8.47 billion, involving 32.2 million shares. Out of 6,747 scrips, a total number of 1.991 scrips were traded.

The highest volume was led by Reliance Industries at Rs 2.05 billion, followed by State Bank of India Rs 1.59 billion, ITC Rs 1.36 billion, Tata Tea Rs 792.9 million, TISCO Rs 488.4 million, TELCO Rs 325.9 million, Castrol India Rs 155.4 million, ACC Rs 150 million, Colgate Rs 131 million, MTNL Rs 96.1 million, Larsen and Toubro Rs 68.1 million, BSES Rs 65 million, Proctor and Gamble Rs 61 million, ICICI Rs 57.2 million, Reliance Cap Rs 56.9 million in the specified counters.

Good transactions was observed at Satyam Comp, Sun Pharma, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Aptech India, NIIT, Federal Bank, JK Corporation, Piramal Health, UTI-M Plus, Hind Zinc, Rhone Poulenc, Reliance Petro, Software Sol and Orchid Chem in 'B1' counters.

National Stock Exchange

Equity prices declined further on heavy selling pressure from the foreign institutional investors and lack of buying support from domestic institutional investors on the National Stock Exchange on Friday.

The NSE-50 index opened at 1181.55 points, touched day's high of 1181.60, low of 1158.45 points, and finally closed at 1160.45 points as against its previous close of 1181.50 points, suffering a loss of 21.05 points.

The midcap index opened nearly steady at 1310.40 points, hovering at the same level for quite some time, came down to 1291.00, before closing at 1293.05 points over the last trading day's close of 1311.45 points, losing 18.40 points.

The total turnover on the NSE was Rs 15.21 billion involving 54.9 million shares.

Hectic trading was observed at the ITC (Rs 3.60 billion), RIL (Rs 3.42 billion), SBI-N (Rs 1.91 billion), Tata Tea (Rs 1.79 billion), TISCO (Rs 641.5), TELCO (Rs 639.6 million), ACC (Rs 485.4 million), Castrol (Rs 304.5 million), L&T (Rs 219.7 million), Colgate (Rs 215.3 million), MTNL (Rs 153.1 million), Rel Capital (Rs 126.9 million), ICICI (Rs 89.7 million), P&G (Rs 88 million) BSES (Rs 86.5 million), Hind Lever (Rs 85.7 million), Guj Amb Cement (Rs 84.2 million), BHEL (Rs 51.2 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 46.3 million), Bank of Baroda (Rs 42.6 million), IFCI (Rs 41.7 million), Satyam Comp (Rs 41.6 million), Tata Power (Rs 40.8 million), IPCL (Rs 38.7 million) and Nicolaspir (Rs 35.3 million) counters.

The top five gainers were Cochin Refinery, Grasim, Indian Hotels, Ranbaxy and Tata Tea and the losers were HDFC Bank, ABB, Rel Capital, BSES and Thermax.

UNI