Sensex sheds 13 points, closes at 13,846.34 pts

Mumbai, Dec 28: After the bullish trend in the last two days, the Sensex today was down by 13.35 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange and closed in negative terrain at 13,846.34 on profit booking by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and local financial institutional investors.

The market witnessed a bout of volatility towards the close of trading on account of expiry of December 2006 derivatives contracts.

The 30-shares BSE Sensex settled 13.35 points lower at 13,846.34.

It had opened on a firm note at 13893.29 and surged to a high of 13,960.39 within minutes of commencement of trade. It touched an intra-day low of 13819.77 in late afternoon session.

The BSE CG and HC indices also declined steeply by 54.40 points and 33.89 points respectively. They closed low at 8989.07 points for CG index and for HC index at 3788.76 points, followed by OIL&GAS index by 30.39 and touched 6206.61 points, BANKEX index by 19.47 points and was quoted at 7100.02 points and PSU index by 6.37 points, closing at 6035.28 points.

The S&P CNX Nifty index of NSE also eased by around four points and closed at 3970.55 points before it resumed flat at 3974.20 points.

It had surged to a high of 3997.35 in early trade. It also touched a low of 3961.95 during the intra day.

The market breadth was negative with 1234 shares advancing on BSE as compared to 1375 shares that declined and 73 shares were unchanged. The total turnover on BSE amounted to Rs 3966 crore as compared to Rs 3664 crore yesterday. Among the Sensex pack, 16 declined while the rest advanced.

The Nikkei was up 0.01 per cent, or 1.66 points, at 17,224.81.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 102.94 points, or 0.83 per cent, to end at a record 12,510.57. The Standard&Poor's 500 Index advanced 9.94 points, or 0.70 per cent, to finish at 1,426.84.

The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 17.71 points, or 0.73 per cent, to close at 2,431.22, which did not impact on indian bourses, a leading broker pointed out.

U.S. light crude futures gained 13 cents at USD 60.47 a barrel after touching a one-month low of .25 a barrel on Wednesday.

Brent crude rose 8 cents to USD 60.60.

Drug maker Cipla was the top loser, down by 2.77 per cent to Rs 252.35 on 1.43 lakh shares. It slipped from a high of Rs 260.45. SBI (down 1.27 per cent to Rs 1235), Dr Reddy's (down 1.13 per cent to Rs 798.40) and Tata Steel (down 1.05 per cent to Rs 476.25) were also in the red.

Reliance Communications was down by 0.41 per cent to Rs 473 on high volumes of 27.48 lakh shares. it had touched a high of Rs 485.

The company is reported to be interested in bidding for rival Hutchison Essar.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) was down by 0.78 per cent to Rs 1282.80 on 13.19 lakh shares. The company is reportedly planning to invest Rs 5,000 crore for gasification of lignite in south Gujarat.

HDFC Bank was the top gainer, up by 2 per cent to Rs 1078 after its ADR gained 3 per cent to .89 on Wednesday on the NYSE.

Hero Honda (up 1.83 per cent to Rs 758), TCS (up 1.73 per cent to Rs 1216) and ITC (up 1.47 per cent to Rs 179) were the other gainers.

Tech Mahindra was the top traded counter on BSE with total turnover of Rs 317.61 crore followed by Indiabulls Financial Services (Rs 217.64 crore) and Reliance Industries (Rs 169.64 crore).

HCL Technologies gained 2.21 per cent to Rs 633.90 on total volume of 21.17 lakh shares after a block deal of 5 lakh shares was struck on the counter on BSE at Rs 619 per share.

Indiabulls Financial Services advanced 5.18 per cent to Rs 673.95 on high volumes of 32.72 lakh shares as buying continued, a day ahead of the last trading date for shareholder eligibility to get the shares of the real estate firm.

The stock had spurted 9.4 per cent to Rs 590.30 on December 21 on high volume of 56.9 lakh shares on BSE after the company announced January 9 2007 as record date for its demerged real estate business, now brought under Indiabulls Real Estate (IREL).

The stock enters no-delivery period on BSE from January 2 2007 to January 8 2007, for the purpose of the demerger of the real estate business, brokers said.

UNI

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