Stocks recover, ignore ratings

MUMBAI, AUG. 9. Bolstered by a sharp rise in Reliance Industries and Hindustan Lever, the benchmark managed to end in the positive terrain on the Bombay Stock Exchange today, closing at 3319.61, a moderate rise of 17.29 points, despite another downgrading by Moody's Investor Service, a leading global rating agency.

The BSE barometer also bucked the global bearish trend after yesterday's steep fall on the Wall Street where the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite index dropped by over 165 and 61 points respectively. The Southeast Asian stock markets also exhibited a downslide. International credit rating agency, Moody's, late on Wednesday lowered India's foreign currency outlook to stable from positive and to negative from positive for domestic debt close on the heels of Standard & Poor's downgrading of India's local currency.

However, the Union Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, sought to allay fears of a fall in rupee value after the down-gradation and said the country's external sector was strong with $43 billion as reserves and it would not affect the fundamentals.

The Reserve Bank of India also asserted that the country was not facing any domestic debt crisis since the economy was stable and good.

Reflecting the impact of negative news at early stages, the BSE- 30 share sensitive index opened lower at 3290.86 and further declined to 3279.62. Later it recovered on fresh buying by foreign institutional investors to a high of 3324.96 before closing at 3319.61. The BSE-100 index, however eased by 1.08 points to 1560.28 from 1561.36.

Though the losers outnumbered the gainers in specified section, a sharp to moderate rise in 14 out of 30 index-based counters including Reliance Industries, Hindustan Lever, BHEL, ITC, ACC and L&T helped the Sensex to close in the positive territory.

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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