Fall in RIL, Infosys stocks checks Sensex rally

MUMBAI, APRIL 23. Marked falls in two top heavyweights, Reliance Industries and Infosys Technologies, prevented fresh rally in the Sensex that ultimately ended in the positive territory on the opening day of new account on the Bombay Stock Exchange today. Well supported by large number of old economy stocks of the Sensex family, the BSE sensitive index which opened steady at 3583.42, could stand the impact of negative trend in RIL, Infosys and Satyam Computer.

After fluctuating narrowly in a range of 3637.36 and 3561.96, it closed at 3587.01 against last Friday's close of 3583.04, a net gain of 3.97 points. The BSE-100 index also edged up by 2.65 points to 1707.08 from 1704.43.

Cyclicals such as ACC, BHEL, Gujarat Ambuja Cement, L&T, HPCL, Hindalco, ITC, MTNL, SBI, Telco and Tisco attracted good support from foreign institutional investors who reportedly absorbed sales of domestic mutual funds and retail investors. Domestic financial institutions and speculators were mostly sidelined in view of a ban on naked short sales as well as hefty both side margins, market sources said.

The FIIs ignored blue chip shares and focused their attention to second line software counters which had been heavily battered during the historic stocks meltdown.

In the specified group, 128 counters including 21 index-based scrips registered sharp to moderate gains while 44 others showed losses.The BSE-200 and the Dollex were quoted up at 370.24 and 131.74 against 369.09 and 131.16 respectively. The BSE-500 looked up by 3.89 points to 1088.95 from 1085.06.

The volume of business remained low at Rs. 1,572.70 crores. Satyam Computer clocked the highest turnover of Rs. 212.11 crores followed by Global Telesystems (Rs. 146.89 crores) and Infosys.

- PTI

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