Software shares stage recovery on BSE

MUMBAI, MARCH 7. The battered software stocks found support throughout the session and made a dramatic comeback aiding the Sensex in an extremely volatile activity on the Bombay Stock Exchange today in the wake of statement by the Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, that there was no payment crisis on the bourses.

Select old economy shares that had witnessed a rally at the time of stocks crash last weekend, however, beat a hasty retreat on selling in the form of profit booking by domestic operators and speculators in a bid to prune their losses.

Taking a cue from Mr. Sinha's statement, ruling out any financial problem, leading institutions such as the Unit Trust of India and Life Insurance Corporation made aggressive purchases in almost all IT stocks.

The optimistic turnaround in the Nasdaq composite index that scored impressive rise for the second straight day yesterday had a sentimental impact on the market.

The BSE sensitive index opened sharply up at 4062.41, and later fluctuated irregularly in a wide range of 4114.11 and 3913.67 before closing at 4046.89 against 3998.12, netting a gain of 48.86 points or 1.22 per cent. The BSE-100 index also recovered by 34.25 points to 2000.34 from 1966.09.

Market sources said domestic operators and speculators were still nervous and preferred to play safe for sometime with the principal market moving force, foreign institutional investors (FIIs), slowing down their activity.

- PTI

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Business
Previous : SEBI ban on short sales
Next     : 'U.S. slowdown, currency trends to impact Exim
           policy'