Scrips Recover Smartly On Fii, Institutional Buying

Speculatives staged a smart recovery with the Sensex gaining over 51 points on the Bombay Stock exchange (BSE) yesterday on emergence of buying support from foreign institutional investors (FIIs) as well as financial institutions and shortcovering by operators. Foreign funds, which sold shares of Hind Lever and Castrol on Monday, made good purchases in these scrips, in addition to extending support to other scrips like ABB, Satyam Computer, ITC and others. Unit Trust of India (UTI) and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) were buying heavy weighted index-based shares such as Tata Steel, SBI-new and Reliance Industries.

Operators covered their short positions in view of the last day of current settlement on the National Stock Exchange. The BSE sensitive index moved in a range of 3,823.29 and 3,763.37, before closing at 3,822.42 as against the previous close of 3,770.99, netting a rise of 51.43 points. The BSE-100 index also improved moderately by 22.74 points to close at 1,664.46 from previous close of 1,641.72. With the appreciation in the rupee, which was quoted at Rs 36.29/30 per dollar this evening, marketmen expected renewed support from foreign funds. Meanwhile, brokers felt that the corrective rally might not last long although the market was in oversold position.

The prices will rally further in the next couple of days but are likely to encounter resistance at the weekend, a leading dealer said. The BSE-200 and the Dollex were quoted substantially up at 373.38 and 171.11 compared with the previous close of 369.41 and 169.25 respectively. ITC remained the most active scrip with a turnover of Rs 247.88 crore of the total volume of business of Rs 880.49 crores. Other active scrips were Reliance Ind (Rs 162.31 crore), Tata Tea (Rs 99.01 crore), SBI-new (Rs 93.40 crore) and Castrol (Rs 77.62 crore).