Wednesday, September 14 2005 17:44 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The market snapped ten-session long winning streak and today (Sept 14, 2005) ended marginally down by over four points after scaling a new record high at 8260.01 on alternate bouts of buying and selling from investors.

The Bombay Stock Exchange Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) touched an all-time intra-trade high at 8260.01 and later fell sharply to the day's low of 8144.32 in irregular movements before ending the day at 8189.48 against yesterday's close of 8193.96, a net loss of 4.48 points or 0.05 per cent.

The benchmark had risen by 555 points or 7.27 per cent in the ten-day-long bull run and was expected to touch 8400-level before a major correction for the good health of the market.

Attributing the negative reaction to heavy sell-off by a leading financial institution, brokers said the market bounced back from the trading lows in the last thirty minutes on good purchases by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and private mutual funds.

FIIs reported net investments of Rs 167.50 crore on Monday while mutual funds made purchases of Rs 316.07 crore on the same day.

Bank stocks attracted brisk activity. Heavy weighted bank shares like SBI, ICICI Bank and HDFC recorded sharp gains.

However, ITC, RIL, Bharti Tele-Venture, BHEL, Grasim, REL ONGC, TCS Ltd, Satyam Computers, Cipla and Tata Steel suffered a sharp setback due to selling pressure.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asserted that fuel price hike will have only a 'moderate' impact on inflation and he did not see any pressure on interest rates. The broad-based BSE-100 Index eased by 7.82 points to 4381.23 from previous close of 4389.05.

The BSE-200 Index and the Dollex-200 were quoted slightly down at 1059.10 and 401.48 at close compared to previous close of 1061.04 and 402.58 respectively. The BSE-500 Index dropped by 7.30 points to 3421.24 from yesterday's close of 3428.54 and the Dollex-30 ended lower at 1530.87 from 1533.10.

The volume of business spurted to Rs 4131.41 crore from Rs 3595.25 crore yesterday. SBI was the top trade scrip with the highest turnover of Rs 206.74 crore followed by REL Capital (Rs 139.56 crore), RIL (Rs 126.86 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 92.33 crore) and Usha Martin (Rs 75.35 crore).

In the specified group, 135 including 18 index-based counters registered sharp to moderate losses while 63 others closed with gains.

RIL dipped by 11.25 to 740.75, ITC by 35.65 to 1856.45, BHEL by 16.65 to 1085.45, Grasim by 12.30 to 1342.40, Bharti Tele-Venture by 6.30 to 336.95, HDFC Bank by 1.20 to 686.85, ONGC by 7.45 to 996.55, REL by 12.15 to 593.55, Satyam Compute by 4.00 to 539, TCS Ltd by 18.55 to 1399.55, Tata Power by 6.60 to 456.30, Tata Steel by 2.95 to 405.30, Cipla by 2.40 to 360.20, Hero Honda by 1.30 to 687.50, L&T by 3.35 to 1319.15 and Ranbaxy by 4.10 to 521.

However, SBI shot up by 16.95 to 898.60, ICICI Bank by 10.25 to 528.90, HDFC by 28.15 to 988.30, Bajaj Auto by 10.25 to 1648.30, Dr Reddy's Lab by 4.40 to 802.25, Hindalco by 4.50 to 150.35, Maruti Udyog by 5.25 to 525.60, Tata Motors by 8.00 to 523, Wipro by 6.75 to 380.05 and HLL by 2.20 to 171.65.