Select scrips move up

MUMBAI, May 16: Select scrips led by ITC, Telco and others advanced further on the Bombay Stock Exchange BSE today mainly on specualtive ...

MUMBAI, May 16: Select scrips led by ITC, Telco and others advanced further on the Bombay Stock Exchange BSE today mainly on specualtive support coupled with fresh buying by the FIIs. The rally was also due to short covering. Other shares generally moved in a narrow range on alterantive bouts of buying and selling. The closing rates showed small to modest changes. The volume of business remained moderate and the closing undertone appeared steady.

The BSE sensitive index moved in a narrow range between 3769.43 and 3738.71 before closing at 3759.64 with a small gain of 18.42 points compared to the previous level of 3741.22. The BSE-100 index edged up by 6.91 points to 1621.65 from 1614.74.

Brokers said that the operators who had resorted to selling in the previous session on rumours of hike in petroleum prices were now squaring off their short positions in view of today being the last session for the current settlement. The small recovery was also due to select buying support by the foreign institutional investors FIIs mainly in Telco, ITC and others also maintained a steady trend.

ITC continued to remain on top of the list with the highest turnover of Rs 195.78 crore in the total volume of business of Rs 593.70 crore followed by SBI of Rs 131.41 crore, Telco of Rs 42.88 crore, Reliance of Rs 40.74 crore and Tata Steel of Rs 31.55 crore.

ITC firmed up further smartly from 421.25 to close at Rs 442 with a handsome gain of Rs 20.75. Telco rallied from Rs 380 to Rs 393.25 and Tata Steel from Rs 173 to Rs 176.50 on specualtive support. SBI, Reliance, Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, Hindustan Lever, Glaxo, IPCL, BHEL, HDFC, Century Textiles, Tata Tea, Lakme, and ACC also remained better.

However, Bajaj Auto dropped further by Rs 15 to Rs 870.75 on selling pressure, HPCL, Nestle, ABB, Gujarat A Cement, Indian Rayon, ICICI, BPCL and Sterlite also remained subdued on profit taking. In the cash group, Tata Info Tech spurted sharply by Rs 66 to Rs 726.50, Pond8217;s, Boots and MRF also remained better. Goodlass, Bayer and Madras Cement remained weak.

On the National Stock Exchange NSE equity prices displayed marginal improvement on some speculative-cum-investment support. The NSE-50 index opened weak at 1043.40 and declined further to 1041.40. Thereafter, it improved to 1049.75, before closing at 1048.40, against the previous level of 1045.00, thus showing a gain of 3.40. However, the Midcap opened marginally lower at 1139.75 and after dropping to 1135.70, terminated at 1136.50 compared to the last close of 1139.50, disclosing a fall of 3.45. The total turnover was Rs 1356.02 crore.