Late buying in select pivotals

MUMBAI, OCT. 5. The Sensex ended with yet another gain of 23.93 points to close at 2812.90 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, the second straight session rally today, backed by late buying in select pivotals that helped overcame early weakness.

A fag end demand from foreign institutional investors in index- based counters such as Infosys, Reliance, L&T, SBI, Ranbaxy, MTNL and few others helped change the initial bearish sentiment to positive, dealers said.

Reflecting the trend, the BSE-30 share sensitive index opened little changed at 2789.10 against yesterday's close of 2788.97, dropped to a low of 2765.21 on profit selling by operators in the absence of follow-up support from FIIs and remained in the negative terrain for the major part of the day.

However, a sudden buying spree in the last session by FIIs in select blue chips led the Sensex recovery and it touched a high of 2826.16 before closing at 2812.90. The BSE-100 index also improved by 4.32 points to 1301.28 from the previous close of 1296.96.

Led by Infosys, select software shares continued their upward march following a overnight rally at Nasdaq where the composite index rose by 16.50 points, stretching a three-day string of profits. Tech stocks seemed to have attained some semblance of stability after positive announcements by some U.S. bellwethers regarding their quarterly earnings, a dealer said.

In the specified section, 95 including 22 index-based counters closed with gains while 73 others registered losses.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted up at 286.73 and 99.48 against 285.78 and 99.21 respectively. The BSE-500 edged up by 2.72 points to 844.87 from 842.15.

The volume of business declined to Rs. 997.84 crores from Rs. 1,110.32 crores. Infosys clocked the highest turnover of Rs. 143.10 crores followed by Wipro (Rs. 135.62 crores) and Ranbaxy (Rs. 104.83 crores).

- PTI

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