Us-64 Skids 10% After Mondays Rear-Up

On the National Stock Exchange's (NSE) wholesale debt market, the secondary market price of Unit Scheme-64 (US-64) units on Tuesday slipped 9.79 per cent to settle at Rs 6.45 a unit, but off from its intra-day low of Rs 6.25 and high of Rs 7.65.

The units managed to settle at premium of 7.14 per cent to the net asset value of Rs 6.02 on Tuesday.

However, volumes on the counter jumped with 5.49 lakh units changing hands compared with 1.80 lakh on Monday.

A dealer at a local brokerage house said, "Such high volumes on the counter were seen last year, when the country's largest mutual fund froze the sales and repurchase of US-64 units."

However, at that time the unit was headed towards the lower end of the circuit filter. The scheme's 52-week high is Rs 9.25 and low is Rs 5.30.

On Monday, the prices had zoomed up 20 per cent to Rs 7.15 per unit, a premium of nearly 18 per cent to its net asset value (NAV) of Rs 6.06, enthused by the government's announcement of the Rs 14,000 crore Unit Trust of India bailout package.

The premium of 18 per cent to NAV has not been seen on secondary market trading in the last few months. The NAV of the scheme stood at Rs 6.06 on Monday. It had closed on Friday at Rs 5.80 with just 38,000 units changing hands.

On Saturday, the government had announced a bailout package for the beleaguered UTI. It also said that tax concessions would be extended to the US-64 scheme on dividend income and capital gains.