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Bulls, FIs exert selling pressure; Sensex sheds 49 points to 3538.17

Pivotals declined sharply at the Bombay Stock Exchange on heavy selling pressure by bull operators as well as leading domestic financial institutional investors, pushing down the 30-share BSE Sensex by about 49 points today.

Reflecting the bearish mood, the Sensex opened at 3582.35 points, touched the day's high of 3606.75, low of 3523.80 points, before closing at 3538.17 points, showing a net loss of 48.63 points from the previous close of 3586.80 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also moved down by 18.94 points to 1555.10 points as against the previous close of 1574.04 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices also eased considerably and closed lower by 4.89 and 2.00 points to 357.03 points and 139.31 points from the previous close of 361.92 points and 141.31 points respectively.

Commenting on the bearish trend, Jignesh Shah, assistant vice president (research) at the Triumph International Finance, a brokerage house, said the market is once again passing through the bearish trend as no one wants to take position till the political uncertainty is over, the institutional investors also have preferred to stay away from the market for quite some time.

According to him, the current market favourites, infotech and pharma sectors, both reported a weak trend today. There were a few shares, namely, Smithkline Beecham, HDFC, Cipla and Novartis posted marginal gains on some buying interest from operators.

Leading BSE brokers said that the report of acceptance of resignations of two All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam ministers by Prime Minister Atal Bijari Vajpayee affected the market sentiment towards the fag-end of trading.

Among the top gainers in issues, ITC gained by Rs 2.50 to Rs 952.50, Grasim by Rs 2.40 to Rs 142.40, German Remedies Rs 7.00 to Rs 800, Tata Tea by Rs 1.50 to Rs 443.00, and Infosys Technologies by Rs 10 to Rs 2,810.

Total turnover on the the BOLT system reported during the day was Rs 11.10 billion while the numer of volumes traded is Rs 46.9 million. Pentafour Software topped the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.08 billion, followed by Satyam Computers Rs 1.41 billion and ITC Rs 624.9 billion.

Other actively traded counters were Digital Equipment (Rs 507.7 million), MTNL (Rs 172.4 million), SBI (Rs 402.4 million), Ranbaxy (Rs 415 million), Infosys Technologies (Rs 330 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 214.9 million), Tata Tea (Rs 285.6 million), Reliance (Rs 367.8 million), BHEL (Rs 260.3 million), L&T (Rs 208.3 million) and ACC (Rs 133.1 million).

UNI

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