Further fall in Sensex

MUMBAI, FEB. 22. A depressed trend continued on the Bombay Stock Exchange today on stale bull liquidation and the Sensex fell by another 39.68 points to close at 4302.23 mainly reflecting the consistent meltdown at Nasdaq, despite a late rally in select index-based scrips partly cushioning the drop in the benchmark.

A sharp decline of about 284 points in the Nasdaq composite index in the past three consecutive sessions, unnerved operators and sent share prices tumbling down. However, a smart midsession rally helped Sensex recover some lost ground, dealers said. ``The early bear carnage was so strong that most of the recently fancied old economy shares also abandoned their recent dominance on profit-taking," a dealer said.

Marketmen attribute the partial recovery in the index to short covering on the penultimate day of the current account and selective buying by foreign institutional investors in heavily weighted old economy shares such as ITC, HPCL, Reliance Industries and Infosys Technologies. The BSE-30 share index opened sharply lower with downside gap at 4252.27 and moved erratically in a range of 4286.63 and 4190.96 before closing at 4262.55. The BSE-100 also declined by 27.10 points to 2166.16 from 2193.26.

Sterlite Industries, however, were in the limelight on getting 51 per cent stake in Bharat Aluminium Company (Balco) from the Government. Tata Elxsi and HCL Infosys bucked the general trend in tech shares and notched handsome gains on interested buying.

In the specified group, 109 including 26 index-based stocks registered sharp to moderate losses while 31 others closed in positive territory. The BSE-200 and the Dollex were quoted down at 468.83 and 167.39 against Wednesday's close of 474.31 and 169.53 respectively.

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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