Three Sensex debutants make handsome gains

Three of the five stocks included in the Bombay Stock Exchange (Sensex) today ended with gains, with debutant Tata Power hitting an all-time high of Rs 264 in intra-day trades before closing at Rs 262.95, up 6.58 per cent over Friday's close. More than 1.58 million shares were traded on the BSE.

New entrant ONGC closed 2.74 per cent higher at Rs 658.70, with traded volumes of 505,000 shares on the BSE. The HDFC Bank scrip closed 1.48 per cent higher at Rs 309.95.

The Bharti Tele-ventures scrip closed 1.17 per cent lower at Rs 84.05, and Wipro also lost, albeit a marginal 0.42 per cent, to close at Rs 1419.70.

All the stocks that were replaced in the 30 scrip Sensex basket lost ground. Nestle lost 2.45 per cent at Rs 560.80, HCL Technologies edged 1.94 per cent lower at Rs 239.75, Castrol was down 1.28 per cent at Rs 191.85, Colgate was down 0.51 per cent at Rs 135.70 and Glaxo Smithkline Pharma was down 1.21 per cent at Rs 496.55.

The revamped Sensex today moved in a wide range of 108.24 points in intra-day trading, but settled 27 points higher at 4,998.57. The broader NSE S&P CNX Nifty gained 2.45 points to settle at 1,594.50.

Meanwhile, trading on the National Stock Exchange was suspended for about 95 minutes from 11:25 am owing to a technical problem.

Incidentally, the recovery in the market followed the resumption of trading on the NSE at 1 pm. In another development, the NSE today switched off a number of terminals of prominent brokers for their failure to meet margins.

Recently, the NSE had announced a reduction in the exposure limit of 48 securities by 20 per cent in the cash market and a reduction in the intra-day trading limit of brokers.

As per the new norms, the intra-day gross turnover of a broker should not exceed 25 times the base capital, down from 33.3 times earlier.

However, a broker can maintain current trading limits with the exchange by increasing his base capital.

The NSE also said today that non-compliance with the norms of the Clearing Corporation would be treated as a breach of the rules, bye-laws and regulations of the exchange.