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Our Market Bureau
Mumbai, March 8: The post-Budget stock market rally regained its momentum and gained a further 83 points to close strong despite end of account considerations at NSE. The rally was seen spreading to hitherto sedate counters like MTNL, BHEL, HPCL, L&T, BPCL and Siemens along with heavyweights like SBI and ITC. The Sensex opened firm at 3704.29 and surged up to the intra-day high of 3775.45.
However, late selling brought it down to a low of 3687.43, before closing at 3732.10 as against last Friday's close of 3649.06, netting a gain of 83.04 points. The BSE-100 index also shot up by 27.59 points to 1623.70 from previous close of 1596.11.
ITC was the star performer in the market. The stock opened at Rs 985 and touched an all-time high of Rs 1013. However, profit-bokking towards the close of the trading session saw the scrip closing slighlty lower at Rs 1009 as against Friday's close of Rs 960. On the current market price,ITC's market capitalisation has gone up to Rs 12040 crore.
"The market is poised togain further strength tomorrow as most of the position shifting from NSE to BSE seems to have taken place today itself. The undercurrent continues to be very bullish," said Alok Churiwala of Churiwala securities. Tuesday is the last day of the current settlement at NSE and punters usually shift positions between the exchanges on the last day.
The rally in the software and pharma stocks was renewed today, although the momentum was more sober. Digital Equipment, Rolta India and CMC hit the upper price band, while Aptech lost 4 per cent ahead of its no-deivery period on NSE starting Tuesday. Pentafour Software was highly volatile and closed at 985 after having raced up to Rs 1035 in the morning session. Among the pharma stocks, Glaxo and Burroughs Wellcome hit the upper price band on sustained buying from foreign funds. Reliance witnessed heavy volatality with the scrip closing weak at Rs 152.50, after having gone up to Rs 159 during the morning session.
Steel sector stocks were hit severly with Tisco losingheavily to close at Rs 112.5. The PSU stocks looked up generally with buying support coming in from domestic and foreign funds. ITC, Pentafour, Satyam, SBI, Reliance, Tata Tea, Zee Telefilms, Castrol and MTNL led the volumes on BSE. FIIs were reportedly net buyers in Siemens, Castrol, Philips, Glaxo, Pfizer, Rhone Poulen, Glaxo, Bhel, ITC, Satyam Computer, Burrows Welcome and Smithkline.
Domestic institutions led by LIC, GIC and UTI were seen accumulating shares of key scrips like SBI, L&T, MTNL, HPCL, Bhel, BPCL and several others.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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