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Sensex plummets by 90 points

The fall in the rupee against the US greenback badly affected the market sentiments on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the Sensex fell heavily by over 90 points due to panic selling pressure from leading foreign institutional investors.

According to leading BSE member, foreign institutional investor Jardine Flaming, Templeton and CL were selling at the prime counters of ITC, Reliance, TISCO and SBI, all of which recorded heavy losses.

Reflecting the bearish phase, the BSE Sensitive Index opened at 3721.39 points, touched the day's high of 3739.04. The Sensex then fell below the psychological barrier of 3700 to touch the day's low of 3627.85 points and later recovered marginally to close at 3633.18 points, showing a net loss of 90.22 points over the previous close of 3723.40 points.

The broadbased BSE-100 Index declined by 35.12 points to 1573.23 points as against the previous close of 1608.40 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 7.97 and 3.56 points to 354.91 and 160.96 points as against the previous close of 361.88 and 164.52 points respectively.

Marketmen said FIIs reportedly sold shares approximately of Rs 1 billion during the course of trading. Due to the fear of further fall in the rupee value, FIIs sold heavily at the prime counters, said a leading BSE broker.

According to market sources, domestic institutional investors made limited purchase in select counters.

Total turnover on the BSE increased sharply to Rs 6.8 million from Rs 4.7 billion recorded yesterday.

ITC continued its top position and registered the highest business volume of Rs 2.7 billion, followed by Reliance Rs 764.3 million, Castrol Rs 345.1 million, Tata Tea Rs 319.8 million, MTNL Rs 252.7 million, Hind Lever Rs 218.1 million, TELCO Rs 186 million, TISCO Rs 158.8 million, BHEL Rs 143.1 million, ICICI Ltd Rs 55.5 million, Hindalco Rs 54.2 million and L&T Rs 52.3 million.

Hectic activity was witnessed at the counters in B1 group Satyam Comp, Rassi Cement, Infosys Tech, NIIT, Rel Pet, Bank of India, LML Ltd, Wockhardt, Aptech Ltd, Nicholas Pir, McDowell Software Sol, ONGC and Wipro.

UNI