Selling pressure on BSE

MUMBAI, OCT. 8. The U.S. led air strikes against Afghanistan triggered panic sales, pushing the Sensex sharply down to the day's low of 2718.41 at the early stages on the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

However, the BSE barometer later rallied smartly following a partial recovery in key stocks as the Union Finance Minister, Mr. Yashwant Sinha, ruled out any major impact of the U.S. strikes on the Indian economy, since it was a limited operation.

Initially, the BSE sensitive index had plunged to a low of 2718.41 on fears that the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Afghanistan would adversely affect the economy. The Sensex later rallied smartly on buying support prompted by the Government's encouraging statement and closed at 2765.37 against last Friday's close of 2812.90, still showing a net loss of 47.53 points or 1.69 per cent. The broad-based BSE-100 index also dropped by 21.25 points to 1280.03 from 1301.28.

Sentiment was also aided by reports that the basket oil price used by OPEC to set its output remained below $22 despite the U.S. air strikes. The war factor was almost discounted with stocks falling sharply after the September 11 terrorist attack on the U.S., market sources said adding ``the Sensex is unlikely to fall below this level".

Many of the key heavyweights recovered their early losses on fresh purchases by domestic financial institutions, while foreign institutional investors reportedly were sidelined.

In the specified group, 130 including 26 index-based counters registered losses while 43 others closed with gains.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 index were quoted down at 281.94 and 97.45 against 286.73 and 99.48 respectively. The BSE-500 moved down by 13.71 points to 831.16 from 844.87. The Dollex-30 was down by 9.90 points at 471.32.

The volume of business remained low at Rs. 893.22 crores. Ranbaxy were the top traded scrip with a turnover of Rs. 124.36 crores followed by Infosys Technologies (Rs. 120.11 crores), Wipro (Rs. 111.97 crores), Relinace Industries (Rs. 104.06 crores) and HCL Technologies (Rs. 62.65 crores).

- PTI

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