The Hindu : Year 2002 ends on cautiously optimistic note

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 01, 2003

Business

Business

Year 2002 ends on cautiously optimistic note

MUMBAI DEC. 31. The year 2002 closed on a cautiously optimistic note with select shares registering modest gains in lacklustre trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange today even as the Sensex managed to end in the positive terrain with a marginal rise of 2.31 points at 3377.28.

Dealers attributed the listless activity to low participation by foreign institutional investors due to the Christmas vacation.

Cement counters such as L&T, Grasim, GACL and ACC continued to be in demand on investment buying by retail investors and local funds. Steel shares such as Tisco and Jindal Steel also attracted buying support on expectation of a price hike.

Barring a few IT stocks such as Infosys Technologies, NIIT and Mastek that finished in the positive territory on select buying, other software scrips encountered selling pressure.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened slightly better at 3376.48 and rallied further to a high of 3398.11. Later, it met with strong resistance and fell to the day's low of 3374.73 before concluding at 3377.28 against yesterday's close of 3374.97. The broad-based BSE-100 index also moved up by 3.63 points to 1664.67 from 1661.04.

In the specified group, 120 including 21 index-based scrips registered gains while 75 others finished with losses.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex-200 were quoted up at 394.04 and 136.59 against 393.20 and 136.50 respectively. The BSE-500 ended up by 3.25 points at 1176.73 against 1173.48 while the Dollex-30 finished slightly lower at 577.30 against 577.74.

The volume of business was relatively up at Rs. 1,165.98 crores against Rs. 1,074.27 crores.

Satyam Computer remained the top traded counter with the highest turnover of Rs. 149.63 crores followed by Digital Global (Rs. 122.26 crores), Infosys (Rs. 111.62 crores), Mastek (Rs. 74.88 crores) and RIL (Rs. 55.73 crores).

PTI

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