Bears tightening grip, Sensex down 52 points

The negative sentiments on Wall Street, where the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index showed a further overnight fall of 19 points —the third consecutive decline —led to large offloading of holdings, resulting in sharp to moderate losses.

Dealers said that FIIs were reluctant to take fresh positions and preferred to wait on the sidelines due to the current fluid political situation. FIIs were reportedly net sellers in some of the IT stocks in the last couple of days. Local funds also booked profits in old-economy scrips, including select government (PSUs) and heavyweight stocks.

Sensex resumed firm at 3,420.62 and immediately touched a high of 3,421.88. Later it met with strong resistance and dropped sharply to a low of 3,350.94 before finishing at 3,359.64 as against yesterday’s close of 3,411.92, a steep fall of 1.53 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 index dipped by 26.41 points to 1,674.65 from the previous close of 1,701.06.

In the specified group, 120 including 25 index-based counters registered sharp to moderate losses while 46 others ended with gains. Satyam Computer tumbled by 6.65 to 259.55, Geometric Soft by 74 to 542.45, Infosys Tech by 87.65 to 3790.25, ACC by 1.35 to 152.25, Bajaj Auto by 9.10 to 479.25, BHEL by 6.90 to 161.60, BSES by 4.70 to 221.05, Cipla by 27.15 to 980.45, GACL by 9.20 to 191.30, HCL Techno by 10.70 to 228.75, HPCL by 10.95 to 259.70, ITC by 27.35 to 611.40, L&T by 2.50 to 167.25, MTNL by 3.95 to 134.30, Nestle by 5 to 514.50, RIL by 2.60 to 287.05 and Zee Tele by 6.80 to 179.15.