Stocks stage minor recovery

Friday, July 18 1997

Stocks stage minor recovery

ENS ECONOMIC BUREAU

MUMBAI, July 17: After a subdued spell, pivotals staged a minor rally on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today on emergence of short covering coupled with fresh buying support by financial institutions. The closing rates showed widespread small gains.

The BSE sensitive index opened at 4183.91, declined further to touch the day's low of 4152.26 but recovered after the mid-session and touched the day's high of 4202.31 by surpassing the psychological barrier of 4200 before closing at 4193.61, showing a net gain of 10.20 points over the previous close of 4183.42. The BSE-100 index moved up further by 0.34 points to 1822.26 against the previous level of 1821.92.

HDFC came under selling pressure as it has already reach the 30 per cent FII purchase limit. The scrip opened at Rs 4700 and eased to Rs 4255 at the fag end of session. Broker said the sentiment remained subdued during the earlier part of the session mainly on selling pressure and absence of speculative support. However, the sentiment turned for the better on good buying from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) as well as leading domestic institutional investors.

FIIs made purchases in counters like Tata Power, Glaxo, TISCO, TELCO, Bajaj Auto, SBI and others. Unit Trust of India (UTI) made good purchases at the SBI and others. However, activity was low with operators opting to purchase shares in the initial stages while the same operators turned sellers on profit-taking at the close. Business was some what restricted due to the holiday at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday.

SBI recorded a turnover of Rs 328.12 crore of the total volume of Rs 893.88 crore. Other active scrips were ITC (Rs 126.07 crore), Reliance (Rs 96.98 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 40.51 crore) and Telco (Rs 36.71 crore). SBI firmed up by Rs 6 to 336.50, ITC by Rs 5 to 510.25, Reliance by Rs 1.25 to 350.75, Tisco by Rs 3 to 209.50 and Telco by Rs 1.50 to 406.50.

On the NSE, pivotals moved in a narrow range. The NSE-50 index closed at 1181.40, showing a loss of 1.06 points over the previous close of 1183. However, the Midcap index moved up by 5.55 points to 1284.40 from 1278.85. The turnover on the NSE was Rs 2158.19 crore.