Equities react on fresh selling

MUMBAI, JUNE 12. Equities reacted negatively closing with moderate losses in extremely narrow movements on the Bombay Stock Exchange today as domestic operators and speculators lightened their commitments ahead of the July 2 deadline for the ban on badla trading.

As a result, the BSE benchmark 30-share index fluctuated in a range of 3517.36 and 3484.08 before closing at 3498.39 against yesterday's close of 3509.32, netting a minor loss of 10.93 points. The BSE-100 index eased by 1.11 points to 1710.95 from the previous close of 1712.06.

The sentiment was largely affected by the slow down by foreign institutional investors, which reportedly made purchases in small quantity in select counters such as Infosys Technologies, Digital Equipment and Wipro.

Operators have gradually been shifting to cash scrips which will be covered under the rolling settlement from January 2002, market sources said.

Operators have no choice but to square up outstanding positions in keeping with the directives by the securities and exchange board of India in the light of its decision to ban carry forward trading with effect from July 2 when the rolling settlement is to be introduced, sources added.

Attributing the slowdown in FII activity to another round of profit warnings by high tech companies abroad, dealers said the market has become directionless in the absence of institutional support.

The losses in the Sensex, however, were minimised largely by a mild rally in Hindustan Lever, Infosys, GACL and Grasim.

In the specified group, 118 including 21 index-based countered registered moderate losses while 55 others finished with gains.

The BSE-200 index and the dollex were quoted fractionally down at 375.43 and 132.93 compared with the previous close of 375.58 and 133.18 respectively. The BSE-500 index was almost steady at Rs. 1105.33 from yesterday's close of 1105.58.

The volume improved to Rs. 1300.73 crores compared to the overnight turnover of Rs. 1097.01 crores.Digital Equipment was the top traded Scrip with the highest turnover of Rs. 176.91 crores.

- PTI

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