The Hindu : Stocks extend gains on BSE

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 12, 2003

Business

Business

Stocks extend gains on BSE

MUMBAI AUG. 11. After a weak start, equities rallied smartly and the Sensex extended its gains to third straight session in an otherwise volatile activity on the Bombay Stock Exchange today even as investors discounted the Securities and Exchange Board of India's action against a leading foreign fund manager.

Reacting negatively to the

SEBI order barring former Asia-Pacific head of Alliance Capital, Samir Arora, from the stock market on charges of insider trading, the BSE benchmark 30-share index opened sharply lower at 3842.14.

However, market sources said it opened sharply down as a result of an erroneous entry of ITC opening rate at Rs. 674.75 against last weekend's close of Rs. 762.10. The Sensex later rallied smartly to the intra-day high of 3915.90 before ending at 3893.41 against last Friday's close of 3883.76, a net gain of 9.65 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index firmed up further by 28.16 points to 2028.98.

Though key public sector enterprises stocks ran out of steam after a smart rally in response to reports that the government would divest part of its residual stakes in disinvested PSEs by January 2004, others such as SAIL, NLC, GNFC, SCI, IBP, IOC and ONGC remained in the forefront scoring impressive gains.

Ruling out any impact of

SEBI's action against Mr. Arora, brokers said selling by local funds and drastic fall in foreign institutional investor activity seemed to have discouraged operators. Speculators were believed to be heavy buyers in steel, shipping and power stocks.

In the specified group, 105 including 16 index-based counters registered sharp to moderate gains while 91 others finished with losses.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted up at 503.59 and 182.42 against 496.98 and 179.76 respectively. The BSE-500 moved up by 20.92 points to 1537.58 and the Dollex-30 edged up to 695.49 from 692.72.

The BSE-PSU index spurted by another 84.04 points to 2663.74.

The volume of business was relatively low at Rs. 1595.20 crores against Rs. 1744.92 crores. SBI were the top traded share with a turnover of Rs. 121.58 crores.

PTI

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