Date:22/08/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/08/22/stories/2006082204681600.htm

Business

Sensex gains 46 points

MUMBAI: Heavy speculative activity in the last 30 minutes, helped consolidate the Sensex, which on Monday closed past the 11500-resistance mark after three successive attempts, amid sluggish trend elsewhere in Asia.

The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex hit the intra-day low of 11375.90 in volatile trading and generally moved upwards after the midsession to close at 11511.68 against last Friday's close of 11465.72, a net rise of 45.96 points.

On the National Stock Exchange, the S&P CNX Nifty advanced by 9.25 points to 3366.

Bulls were active at the fag end of the session and were believed to have cornered a sizable chunk of frontline stocks, brokers said, adding that, "the market is strongly bullish and expected to cross the 11600-mark during Tuesday's session."

Foreign institutional investors, who virtually indicated slowdown in inflows on Friday, were fairly heavy buyers during the second half of the session, they said.

The FIIs, as per provisional numbers on the NSE web, reported net purchases of Rs. 87.62 crore in the Cash segment on August 18 while pulling out Rs. 72.88 crore from the Futures segment.

In Asian markets, the Nikkei closed down by 136.94 points, the Hang Seng by 322.82 points, the Taiwan by 215.16 points, the Singapore ST by 16.23 points and the Kospi by 9.43 points after a Chinese rate hike.

Sentiment was bolstered by fresh FII activity, which mostly depended on global developments.

Bank, automobile and IT shares were in the limelight while Pharma and fast moving consumer goods stocks attracted profit selling.

The market breadth was positive with 1,448 gainers and 1,035 losers of the 2,570 total traded shares. — PTI