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Players unwind long positions; profit-booking shaves 100 points off Sensex to 4837

The Bombay Stock Exchange Senstive Index crashed by over 100 points and closed below the 4,900 mark following sustained profit-booking (selling pressure) in select shares from foreign institutional investors and local operators today.

According to marketmen, the huge outstanding positions worth Rs 30.8 billion at the BSE was the reason behind the major fall as most of the players preferred to unwind their long-term positions on the penultimate day of the weekly settlement today.

The FIIs too pressed sales in heavy weighted counters like Reliance Industries Limited, Satyam Computer Services, Pentafour, bringing their prices from the day's high to close far below than previous closing levels, dealers said.

Reflecting the bearish mood, the Sensex opened at 4972.81 points, about 30 points up from the previous day's close of 4943.14 points, touched a day's high of 4977.57 points and fell sharply to touch a day's low of 4834.23 points, before closing at 4836.91 points, showing a net loss of 106.23 points as against the previous close.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also declined by 62.11 points to 2306.67 points as against the previous close of 2368.78 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 13.97 and 5.65 points to 538.64 and 206.39 points as against the previous close of 552.61 and 212.04 points respectively.

The BSE-500 index also declined sharply by 42.49 points to 1617.61 points as against the previous close of 1660.10 points.

Dealers said that scrips like Zee Telefilms, Global Telesystems, Satyam came under heavy selling pressure while Grasim and L&T remained strong throughout the day.

Petrochem giant Reliance topped the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 3.54 billion, followed by Zee Telefilms Rs 2.51 billion, Satyam Computers Rs 2.50 billion, Ranbaxy Rs 1.75 billion, Global Telesystems Rs 1.69 billion, Silverline Rs 1.24 billion.

Other actively traded counters were NIIT Rs 788 million, Tisco Rs 624.9 million, ACC Rs 612.3 million, Himachal Futuristic Commmunications Rs 604.3 million, L&T Rs 585.9 million, Infosys Technologies Rs 537.6 million and MTNL Rs 520.5 million.

UNI

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