Equities Recover Further On Partial Institutional Support

Equity prices recovered further following the marginal support from the domestic institutional investors and short covering made by the bull operators on the last day of the current settlement cycles in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) yesterday.

However, the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were absent from the market after yesterdays moderate support. Leading brokers said and they were hopeful of positive results from the meeting between Union finance minister P Chadambaram and top officials of domestic financial institutional investors.

Meanwhile the BSE Sensex opened steady at 2812.47 and rose to an intra-day high of 2841.80, before settling at 2826.20 as against 2812.22, showing a small gain of 13.98 points. The BSE-100 edged up by 9.55 points to 1254.59 from 1245.04 on Thursday. The BSE -200 and the Dollex were quoted up at 281.15 and 130.79 compared with 278.69 and 129.50 respectively.

 

Operators attributed the fresh rise to a technical correction and expectation of governments initiatives to revive the bourses. Brokers said FIIs were hesitant to take positions in view of discouraging corporate performance and slow economic growth.

Long term investors will re-enter the market only if the government took some steps like revision of the minimum alternative tax (MAT) and removal of double taxation hinted by the finance minister earlier, they opined. The market now required long term measures and even the institutions were asked to support the market, it would have a temporary effect on the sentiment, they added.

HLL rallied with sharp gains on brisk buying support. ITC, Britannia, M & M, Castrol and Raymond also recorded substantial gains on fresh support.

The total turnover on the screen-based trading system was 319.38 crore, involving 2.06 crore shares. Out of 6,918 scrips, a total number of 2,609 scrips were traded on the BOLT system.

Hectic trading was seen in SBI ( rs 72.35 cr), ITC (Rs 46.39 cr), Reliance Industries (Rs 33.51cr) and Tisco (Rs 30.08 cr), followed by L & T, Gujarat Ambuja, MTNL, Bajaj Auto, Telco, BSES, ACC, HLL, IPCL, M & M and ICICI in specified counters.