Sensex up 68 points on tech stocks rally

MUMBAI, APRIL 16. Technology stocks rallied smartly, scoring impressive gains aiding the Sensex to close up by about 68 points on the opening day of new account on the Bombay Stock Exchange today following sustained price upsurge on Wall Street last week.

In a four-day winning streak, the Nasdaq composite index finished the week with a rise of about 15 per cent injecting some life in local software stocks that witnessed investors' wrath following lower revenue projections for 2001-02 by the IT leader Infosys Technologies in the previous week.

The market overcame early poundings in key heavyweights such as Zee Telefilms and Hindustan Lever taking the Sensex to the intra- day low of 3096.51, as several others such as Infosys, Satyam Computer, Reliance, Tisco and others flared up on good purchases by foreign institutional investors.

Zee Telefilms, in which some player reportedly picked up a big chunk of about seven lakh shares at one stroke around noon, and HLL too recovered part of its initial losses in line with renewed buying support. The BSE sensitive index gradually moved upwards after the midsession and closed at 3251.62 against last Thursday's close of 3183.77, showing a net rise of 67.85 points or 2.13 per cent. The BSE-100 index shot up by 44.05 points to 1516.98 from 1472.93.

Besides technology, media and telecom, the FIIs made fresh investments in several old economy stocks, market sources said adding ``there was heavy buying in RIL counter from company circles". Though the rally in IT stocks was quite encouraging, dealers were not confident that the market would move upwards unless it was bottomed out.

Wipro, Digital Equipment, Global Telesystems, Pentamedia Graphics, DSQ Software, Silverline and Essel Packaging were locked in the upper circuit at close. However, Mastek were stuck in the 16 per cent lower price band.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex were quoted up at 330.91 and 117.49 against 321.61 and 114.19 respectively. The BSE-500 improved by 26.71 points to 975.95 from 949.24.

However, the volume of business was low at Rs. 964.70 crores. Infosys clocked the highest turnover of Rs. 158.98 crores followed by Satyam Computer (Rs. 144.62 crores), RIL (Rs. 81.43 crores), Zee Telefilms (Rs. 54.92 crores) and HLL (Rs. 46.01 crores).

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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