Cyclicals lose early gains on BSE

MUMBAI, SEPT. 10. Equities, particularly old economy stocks, lost early gains and closed with moderate falls leading to the Sensex closing in the negative territory in dull activity on the Bombay Stock Exchange today due to selling by foreign institutional investors.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index opened on a firm footing at 3224.90. But later reacted negatively dipping to the day's low of 3180.85 before closing at 3183.63 against last Friday's close of 3198.40, a net loss of 14.77 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index moved down by 6.59 points to 1506.39 from 1512.98.

Attributing the promising start to the assurance by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, last Friday to increase public investments in core infrastructure sector to avert economic crisis, market sources said the optimism failed to sustain further in view of another statement by Mr. Vajpayee during the trading session about the grave nature of the current economic slowdown.

Mr. Vajpayee's assurance earlier had raised hopes of fresh initiatives by the Government to speed up economic reforms in spite of a continuous slide on the Wall Street. The U.S. stocks reeled last Friday after government data showed further signs of economic distress.The FIIs, who generally were net sellers in the past couple of weeks, reportedly were selling in key old-economy counters.

However, domestic mutual funds, mainly Unit Trust of India, extended support to a few heavyweight counters such as Infosys Technologies, Grasim and others.

In the specified group, 83 including 18 index-based scrips registered moderate losses while 85 others finished with gains.

The BSE-200 index and the Dollex-200 were quoted slightly down at 328.63 and 115.72 against 329.63 and 116.22 respectively.

- PTI

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Business
Previous : Rupee slumps to historic low
Next     : Rural demand may not drive industrial growth -
           NCAER