Thin deals in equities

MUMBAI, MAY 14. Stocks hovered in a limited range and the Sensex ended with modest gains in directionless trading on the opening day of new account on the Bombay Stock Exchange today as players awaited the outcome of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) board meeting on the proposal to ban badla.

The market lacked direction with a few domestic operators and speculators making intra-day deals awaiting a major announcement by the market regulator on the carry forward system, which the SEBI group had proposed to ban from July 2 when the rolling settlement is introduced.

Participants were extremely cautious as the SEBI decision would determine the trend in the short term, market sources said and added that nobody was willing to take risk in the prevailing market situation.

The BSE sensitive index opened marginally down at 3552.55 and later fluctuated in a small range 3577.28 and 3536.57 before closing at 3568.93 against last Friday's close of 3559.77, a net gain of 9.16 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index edged up by 2.11 points to 1718.26 from 1716.15.

Even foreign institutional investors and Indian financial institutions and mutual funds were mostly sidelined.

The heavyweights Infosys Technologies, ITC and Tisco, which met with moderate resistance, played a major role in mitigating the Sensex gains. However, the BSE benchmark should have been better placed considering the gains in Reliance Industries, Hindustan Lever, MTNL and SBI.

Meanwhile, the SEBI has banned carry forward products from July 2 as proposed by its group.

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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