Welcome rally in Lyons Range

By A Special Correspondent

CALCUTTA, MAY 28. The notable improvement in some of the key shares on the Calcutta Stock Exchange last week starting midway has restored confidence. The rally has been quick and the trend appears to be gaining strength as reflected by the market's performance on the final day. Thus, after a prolonged spell of despondency, the market has moved into the positive territory with select scrips encountering sustained support both from individual and institutional investors.

And for once after an interval the domestic bourses have moved on their own ignoring for a while the Nasdaq fluctuations which have been guiding sentiment in the recent past. Encouraging corporate reports with ITC's board of directors releasing impressive results for the year ended March 2000 and some other factors have been behind the uptrend witnessed in the market.

Calcutta shared the winds of change that started blowing into the bourses across the country enabling scores of scrips to surge and what is more impressive is the steady rise in volume in some of the leading counters which posted perceptible gains as the week would up. Yet another impetus to sentiment came from the meteorological office's forecast of a normal monsoon this year setting at rest recent electronic media reports to the contrary.

With share values climbing, the CSE's 40 share index wound up the week at 1943.06 points compared to May 19 level of 1907.70 and the worst 1815 touched on May 24.

According to Mr. Vivek Mahajan, former vice-president of CSE and a technical analyst, the bear hammering has ceased and indications are that the market will now witness stable conditions with frequent rallies. The technical position of the market has also improved markedly to help the reversal of the trend that was noted late in the week under review. He said over the past decade the market had moved forward to summits thrice and on the third occasion it breached the earlier tops. But in the recent bearish phase it had fallen to rock bottom levels from where a move towards positive area is overdue. That is exactly what is happening at present, he added.

Cements, steels and select others including ITC were briskly traded helping the concerned shares to post fair gains over their previous week's closing rates. The ITC scrip which had been in the limelight for ore than ten days past, zoomed to close at Rs. 654.60 (Rs. 619.10) on active speculative cum investor support while ACC after slumping well below Rs. 100 mark stated a smart comeback to finish at Rs. 124.40.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Business
Previous : Maruti's rivals race for market share
Next     : A season of paradoxes