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Bombay's Sensex shivers to Delhi politics, crashes 97 points, goes under 3,500

M P Joshi in Bombay

The withdrawal of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam from the coordination committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government at the Centre dragged down sentiment at the Bombay Stock Exchang.

The Sensex crashed by 97 points, following massive unloading by bull operators. There was also lack of buying support from domestic institutional investors.

The Sensex opened at 3543.24 points, which was to be the day's high, fell sharply by 120 points and touched an-intra day low of 3423.84 before closing at 3441.19 points, showing a net loss of 96.98 points from the previous close of 3538.17 points.

The S&P CNX Nifty at the National Stock Exchange also declined by 26.95 points to 993.40 points from the previous close of 1020.35 points.

According to market sources, punters at the stock markets have lost all hopes of rapprochement between the AIADMK and the BJP.

Leading BSE brokers said that bulls who were in huge outstanding positions worth Rs 16 billion, reportedly sold shares worth Rs 3 billion. This is the second major setback the market has suffered in this week due to political uncertainty.

The political uncertainty continues to cast its shadow on the market. Out of two trading sessions, the market reported moderate to heavy losses on speculative selling pressure from bull operators.

Besides, ACC, Zee TV, Hero Honda, Hindustan Lever and select shares from pharma like Novartis, Cipla, Pfizer, E Merck, none of the scrips could register gain in the falling market today, dealers said.

The market even responded negatively to the better results from software giant Infosys Technologies which posted an impressive net profit at Rs 1.35 billion for the year ended March 31, 1999 compared to Rs 600 million in the last year. The scrip lost substantially like other infotech shares, dealers said.

Being, the week's last day at the BSE, nobody preferred to take positions in such a bad time when the foreign institutional investors, and Indian financial institutions preferred to take a wait and watch attitude, opined Shrikant Chauhan, executive dealer at the Motilal Oswal Securities, a broking firm at the BSE.

The broad-based BSE-100 index declined sharply by 44.30 points to 1510.80 points from the previous close of 1555.10 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices eased by 10.78 and 4.06 points to 346.71 and 135.25 points from the previous close of 357.03 and 139.31 points respectively.

Among the issues, Cadbury's gained Rs 12 to Rs 606, E Merck Rs 28 to Rs 635.75, Exide Rs 3.60 to Rs 201.50, Grasim Rs 11 to Rs 132, Hero Honda Rs 7.50 to Rs 808.

Among the major losers, Bajaj Auto was down by Rs 28 to Rs 569, BHEL Rs 13.80 to Rs 170.20, BSES Rs 5.20 to Rs 161, Dr Reddy's Rs 23 to Rs 732, Glaxo Rs 25 to Rs 818, Grasim Rs 11 to Rs 132. Hindustan Lever crossed Rs 2,200 level, moved down towards the close losing by Rs 19 to Rs 2199, Infosys Technologies Rs 208 to Rs 2606, ITC Rs 59 to Rs 939, L&T Rs 3.20 to Rs 208.30, Mahindra and Mahindra Rs 7.50 to Rs 204, MTNL Rs 8.40 to Rs 156, NIIT Rs 110 to Rs 1,685, Pentafour Software Rs 84 to Rs 1,089, Reliance Rs 3.70 to Rs 120.20, Satyam Computers Rs 94 to Rs 1,390, Telco Rs 7.40 to Rs 142.10, Tisco Rs 3.50 to Rs 90.70.

Total turnover on the BOLT system reported during the day was Rs 15.37 billion.

Pentafour Software topped the list by registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.85 billion, followed by Satyam Computers Rs 1.85 billion, ITC Rs 1.11 billion. Other actively traded counters were ACC (Rs 719.1 million), Infosys Technoliges (Rs 705.7 million), Reliance (Rs 539 million), SBI (Rs 486.8 million), Digital Equipment (Rs 471.7 million), Ranbaxy (Rs 410.9 million), Tata Tea (Rs 366.1 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 365.7 million), L&T (Rs 297.1 million), MTNL (Rs 229.3 million), BHEL (Rs 201 million) and Castrol India (Rs 189.8 million).

UNI

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