Sensex loses 43 points on FI selling

MUMBAI, JULY 26. Equities drifted further pushing the Sensex down by another 43 points at close on the Bombay Stock Exchange today due to sustained selling pressure from domestic financial institutions as well as operators and retail investors.

A moderate recovery of about 25 points in the Nasdaq composite index yesterday even failed to attract any foreign institutional investors who have considerably slowed down their activity in the past few days.

The BSE sensitive index opened weak at 3298.64 and later moved downwards to a low of 3254.28 before closing at 3259.03 against yesterday's close of 3301.97, a fall of 42.94 points or 1.30 per cent. The BSE-100 index dropped further by 14.86 points to 1529.14 from 1544.

There was strong speculation in the market about heavy offerings by the Unit Trust of India in select software counters that had found favours from a controversial big bull Ketan Parekh, a key accused in the multi-crore pay-order scam, whose anticipatory bail petition was rejected on merits by the Mumbai High Court this afternoon.

However, yesterday's prominent second-line stocks such as Sterlite Optical, Shyam Telecom, Sonata Software, Digital Equipment, Polaris and Aptech staged a partial recovery on buying support at lower levels. Domestic mutual funds reportedly were heavy sellers in old as well as new economy stocks.

In the specified group, 104 including 19 index-based counters registered marked to moderate losses while 70 others finished with gains.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex were quoted down at 335.57 and 118.47 against 338.63 and 119.62 respectively. The BSE-500 eased by 9 points to 983.87 from 992.87. The Dollex-30 also fell by 7.84 points to 567.36 from 575.20.

The volume of business was relatively up at Rs. 861.36 crores against Rs. 750.52 crores. Infosys Technologies recorded a turnover of Rs. 171.88 crores followed by Digital Equipment (Rs. 121.98 crores), Wipro (Rs. 67.84 crores), Satyam Computer (Rs. 56.16 crores) and Reliance Industries (Rs. 50.67 crores).

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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