Sensex down by 25 pts on bargain hunting, close below 11,700 mark

Mumbai, Aug 31 (UNI) The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index (Sensex) troubled with volatility on account of heavy selling shed 24.87 points as the August derivatives contracts came to a close today.

Bargain hunting in the select midcap and the smallcap scrips led by profit bookings in the later half of the day compelled Sensex to snap the seventh consecuitive day gain. BSE Sensex closed at 11699.05 which is 25 points less than the previous close of 11,723.92.

Sensex today touched a high of 11,794.43 and a low of 11,675.08 showing a swing of 119.35 points.

Similarly the S&P CNX Nifty shed 16.45 points or 0.48 per cent to settle at 3,413.90.

Also the breadth in the broader market turned weak in favour of 1718 declines as against 801 advances and 71 scrips that remained unchanged out of total 2590 scrips that traded on the BSE counters today.

In the benchmark Asian Indices Japan's Nikkei 225 average jumped 1.6 per cent to 16,140.76 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 0.7 per cent to 17,393.

Amongst the BSE sectoral indices the Consumer Durables was down by 1.67 per cent to 3027.62 per cent, Metals was down by 1.55 per cent to 8094.18, Oil&gas by 1.11 per cent to 5661.62 points and the PSU was down by 0.93 per cent to 5,556.05 points.

BSE Dollex-30 was down by 0.22 per cent to 2064.90 points, Dollex-100 was down by 0.45 per cent to 1,319.67 points and the Dollex-200 was down by 0.51 per cent to 500.62 points.

The major gainers on the BSE Sensex were-ITC up by 2.08 per cent to Rs 191.25 points, HDFC down by 1.54 per cent to Rs 853.15, TCS was up by 1.21 per cent to Rs 996.05, Cipla was up by 0.73 per cent to Rs 249.95, Ranbaxy was up by 0.56 per cent 406.80, Infosys was down by 0.55 per cent to Rs 1808.80, HDFC up by 0.46 per cent to 1,308.35, Bajaj Auto up by 0.36 per cent to 2,697.50, ICICI was up by 0.31 per cent to Rs 596.50 and Dr Reddy's up by 0.24 per cent to Rs 720.50.

Besides the losers on the index were-Tata Steel down by 2.05 per cent to Rs 496.20, Gujarat Ambuja down by 1.96 per cent to Rs 112.35, Reliance Communications down by 1.72 per cent to Rs 299.65, Wipro down by 1.53 per cent to Rs 517.90, Satyam Computers down by 1.40 per cent to Rs 808.20, ACC down by 1.39 per cent to Rs 909.65, Reliance Industries down by 1.03 per cent to Rs 1,117.60, Tata Motors down by 0.97 per cent to Rs 845.15, BHEL down by 0.95 per cent to Rs 2,260.95 and L&T down by 0.84 per cent to Rs 2,401.05.

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