Margins Halt Rally, Sensex Sheds 121 Pts

Selling pressure on key index-based stocks triggered off a 2.5 per cent fall on the bourses yesterday.

The Bombay Stock Exchange sensex crashed to an intra-day low of 5,774.32 before closing at 5,803.19, shedding 121.12 points from its previous close. The S&P CNX Nifty closed at 1,744.50, down 41.95 points from its previous close.

Market players said the further tightening of the margins and the fact that it was the last day of settlement on the National Stock Exchange yesterday provoked heavy unwinding of speculative positions.

The Business Standard ICE index of the convergent economy continued to forge ahead reporting a rise of 0.94 per cent to close at 373.96 compared to 2.04 per cent drop in BSE Sensex. The growth was been backed by Wipro, that touched the upper end of the circuit filter yesterday to close at Rs 7074.40. While Aptech and Satyam Computers witnessed a small rise of 1.4 per cent each Crest Communication also hit the upper end of the circuit filter. Excluding ICICI Bank and Global Telesystem all others saw a downturn. NIIT hit lower end of the circuit filter. Meanwhile, HCL Technologies, the Shiv Nadar group company grabbed the fifth position, dethroning Reliance Industries in terms of market capitalisation. With this, four of the top five companies are ICE (information, communication and entertainment) companies. HCL Technologies closed at Rs 2488.90 boosting its market capitalisation to Rs 34, 515 crore.