Cyclicals post smart gains

MUMBAI, SEPT. 27. Select old-economy shares, led by petrochem giant Reliance Industries, posted smart gains and lifted the benchmark by another 48.16 points to close at 2715.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange today following sustained buying by local funds.

Mirroring the upbeat mood, the BSE-30 share sensitive index opened better at 2674.29 and moved in a narrow range of 2726.97 and 2669.05 before closing at 2669.05 against yesterday's close of 2667.34, a net rise of 1.81 per cent. The BSE-100 index also improved further by 5.77 points to 1271.07 from 1265.30.

Wednesday's favourite, Reliance Industries again took the centre- stage on heavy buying by company circles as well as domestic institutions to induce support for some other key old-economy scrips and help extend the overnight sharp rally.

The new-economy sector, however, exhibited a mixed bag on alternate bouts of buying and selling, dealers said.

Software bellwether Infosys Technologies suffered a severe beating following nervous offloading by some foreign institutional investors due to a reversal of last two days trend on the Wall Street, while HCL Tech, CMC, Mastek, NIIT and few others found interested buying support.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq composite index both dropped yesterday by 92.58 points and 37.60 points respectively.

Local institutions continued their buying spree picking up index- based blue chips such as Reliance Industries, Hindustan Lever, HPCL, MTNL, SBI, ITC, L&T and ACC while other funds preferred to book profits in select software counters.

In the specified group, 111 including 21 index-based scrips closed with gains while 56 others registered losses.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted slightly higher at 280.06 and 97.36 against 278.74 and 96.92 respectively. The BSE- 500 moved up by 4.14 points to 825.81 from 821.67. The Dollex-30 also improved further by 8.16 points to 465.53 from 457.37.

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Section  : Business
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