MUMBAI, DEC 23: The benchmark Sensex on Thursday crossed the 5,000 landmark for the second time this year. Enthusiastic bulls took the Sensex above the magic figure in the opening session itself, but stocks later met with selling pressure and staged a hasty retreat on the Bombay Stock Exchange.The huge volatility in the index and share prices kept market men on tenterhooks. Although the Sensex opened with a huge gap of 122 points at 5077, selling came in immediately and during mid-session, the index dipped to the day's low and again crossed the 5000-mark and remained there till half-an-hour before close.During the last half-an-hour, the market witnessed heavy selling from all quarters and the Sensex came down sharply to close at 4969, a gain of 21 points over its previous close of 4948. The Infosys scrip opened at the circuit level of Rs 12,912 after its ADRs had gained $ 31 overnight to $ 347 on the Nasdaq. Later as profit-booking came in, the scrip closed down at Rs 12,868. This means 100 shares ofInfosys with a face value of Rs 10 will now cost Rs 12.86 lakh.Brokers said there was heavy profit-taking by foreign funds, domestic institutions and operators in select heavy-weight counters which mainly brought down Sensex from the day's high towards the fag end of trading. Besides, sharp fall in pivotals were also on reports of the higher badla rates at Calcutta Stock Exchange (CSE). The annualised badla rates at the CSE quoted at 60-65 per cent from the previous rates of 50-55 per cent.Several counters, which were showing continuous gains, also came under selling pressure due to profit-booking by bull operators. The badly hit counters were Crisil, Global Tele, HDFC, ICI India, ICICI, Kesoram, MTNL, Nicholas Piramal, SAIL, Titan and Satyam Computer.Wipro, ACC, Guj Narmada, Zee Telefilm and Mastek also posted handsome gains on sustained buying support from market players. Today's rally was again restricted to infotech and cyclical stocks while the pharma and FMCG were either holding on or postedmarginal losses.Due to some major technical fault on the NSE, the day's trading on the bourse started at 2.30 pm and was extended till 5pm. The BSE also extended trading hours by one-and-half hours to 5 pm. According to brokers, the BSE move was mainly to preempt the earlier observed attempts by operators to force price discrepancy whenever one exchange closed early during the day. According to brokers, the volatility witnessed during the day was mainly on account of the absence of any scope for comparison between the two exchanges. And after the NSE opened at 2.30 pm, ``it was mainly the day traders who were active,'' said a dealer with a domestic broking house.According to brokers, heavy institutional selling at higher levels were witnessed. ``Most of the institutions sold heavily in the pivotal counters during the second half of the day,'' he said. For Friday, the last day of trading in the current account on the BSE, markets are expected to remain lacklustre.
