Business

Sensex ends lower on late sell-off

MUMBAI JULY 4. After a smart rally in early trading, equities later met with a strong resistance and some of the heavyweighted counters suffered a sharp setback pushing the Sensex in the negative territory on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday on late sell-off by operators and local funds.

Speculators who have made large commitments in several counters in the past couple of weeks, chose to book profits after domestic funds led by Life Insurance Corporation reportedly pressed heavy sales at higher levels.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index which rallied smartly to the intra-day high of 3661.87 in the early stages, later turned weak and ended at 3622.34 against the previous close of 3639.89, netting a fall of 17.55 points.

The broadbased BSE-100 index, however, edged up by 3.04 points to 1838.69.

Brokers also attributed selling by operators to slowdown in FII activity during the week. Foreign funds were net buyers to the tune of Rs. 370 crores in the first three sessions. Considering the sell-off by operators, brokers expect a small correction next week with bulls having large positions in a number of scrips. Sentiment was partly affected by the overnight fall in Wall Street.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended lower by 72.63 points and the Nasdaq Composite Index by 15.27 points yesterday.

Hindutan Lever, Infosys, Grasim, MTNL, Ranbaxy and SBI were the major losers in the index-based counters. However, Bajaj Auto, BHEL, Cipla, HPCL, ITC, Reliance and Zee Telefilms scored handsome gains on fresh buying.

— PTI

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