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Political uncertainty pulls down Sensex by 245 points

The political uncertainty at the Centre affected sentiments at the country's premier bourse with the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex registering a whopping loss of 245 points, touching exactly the pre-Budget level of 3441.19 points.

The market sentiments were so bad it could not even react positively to the Infosys Technology's impressive results for the year ended March 31, 1999. According to analysts and leading stock brokers, the market lost heavily only because of recent political developments.

The foreign institutional investors adopted a wait-and-watch attitude while the leading domestic institutional investors pressed sales in select counters throughout the week.

Mirroring the bearish mood, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex fell sharply by 245.10 points to 3441.19 points as against the previous week's close of 3686.29 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index declined sharply by 123.07 points to 1510.80 points from the previous close of 1633.87 points.

The scene on the country's another leading bourse, the National Stock Exchange was very much similar to the BSE where the S&P CNX Nifty crashed by 76.05 points to 993.40 points from the previous week's close of 1063.45 points.

Analysts said that the market is likely to continue the downtrend in the first half of the next week. The board meeting of Satyam Computer, Ranbaxy could brighten the sentiment in the later part of the week in case there is any indication of survival of the vajpayee government.

With the fall of the 245 points, the Sensex at the BSE went back to the pre-Budget level. The Sensex was quoted at 3424.00 prior to the Budget.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices eased by 29.43 and 12.34 points to 346.71 and 135.25 points from the previous week's close of 376.14 and 147.59 points respectively.

Total turnover on the BSE reported during the week was Rs 79.16 billion.

The current market favourite, the infotech sector, pharma, FMCG also dropped significantly alongwith other index-based shares.

Among the issues, ACC moved down by Rs 19 to Rs 1465, BHEL Rs 64.90 to Rs 170.20, Cadbury Rs 23.75 to Rs 606.50, Castrol Rs 44 to Rs 798, Colgate Rs 6.10 to Rs 171.90, Dr Reddy's Rs 118 to Rs 732, German Remedies Rs 3.75 to Rs 794.25, Glaxo Rs 103 to Rs 818, Hero Honda Rs 57 to Rs 808, Hindustan Lever Rs 40 to Rs 2180, Infosys Technologies Rs 223 to Rs 2606, ITC Rs 5.75 to Rs 939, MTNL Rs 16 to Rs 156, NIIT Rs 165 to Rs 1685, Pentafour Software Rs 162, Reliance Rs 11.40 to Rs 120.20, Satyam Computers Rs 310 to Rs 1390, SBI Rs 35.50 to Rs 170.50, Telco Rs 24.50 to Rs 142.10. Tisco Rs 10.10 to Rs 90.70 and Zee Telefilms Rs 67.25 to Rs 910.

At the NSE, S&P CNX Nifty fell by almost 70 points, from 1063.45 on April 1 to 993.40 on April 9.

The S&P CNX Nifty Junior fell sharply by 201.70 to 1870.20 points from the previous week's close of 2071.90 points.

S&P CNX Defty ended lower by 61.80 points to 806.60 points from the previous week's close of 868.40 points.

S&P CNX-500 and CNX Midcap-200 closed lower by 58.37 and 67.02 points to 694.27 and 630.36 points as against the last week's close of 752.64 and 697.38 points.

Total turnover on the NSE reported during the week was stood at Rs 100.12 billion.

UNI

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