The Hindu Business Line : Sensex turns cautious, ends lower

THE market opened on a firm note but failed to sustain the pace and traded for most of the day in the red. Caution seems to be the buzzword in the run-up to the Budget announcements, the market ended lower for the fourth day.

After opening marginally higher, the market almost immediately took a plunge into negative territory. The negative trend was across the breadth of the market; the declines-advances ratio on the BSE was 1.3.

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The BSE Sensex reached an intra day high of 6602.53 in the early part of the trading session; it closed at 6534.68, 49 points down from Friday's close. The Sensex has lost nearly 145 points over the past week, 24 stocks constituting the Sensex declined.

The S&P CNX Nifty, after opening at 2055.15 points, traded within a narrow band of 46 points and closed at 2055.55 lower by 0.6 per cent from the previous close. The CNX Nifty Junior and CNX IT lost 1.29 per cent and 1.16 per cent.

The stock of cement companies UltraTech Cement, Prism Cement, Madras Cements and India Cements ended lower on selling pressure. Shares of Mangalam Cement ended lower by 2.55 per cent at Rs 78.75.

Interest in engineering stocks appears to have flattened out, as scrips of engineering majors traded on lower volumes.

Shares of Engineering majors Crompton Greaves, Cummins India, Siemens and Tata Honeywell. The stock of Bharat Heavy Electricals closed at Rs 842 lower by Rs 10.65.

Stocks of FMCG companies also lost ground, the BSE FMCG index was pulled down by Colgate-Palmolive India, Gillette India, Hindustan Lever and Tata Tea.

The ITC stock, on expectation of a rise in excise duty on cigarettes, ended the day's trade at Rs 1264.65, down Rs 17.95 from the previous close.

The stock of Raymond appears to have cooled down subsequent to last week's gain as volumes were four-tenth as of Friday's. The stock ended lower by Rs 10.6 at Rs 315

The market appeared to have factored in on the news that large paper mills are expected to consider an upward revision in prices of writing and printing papers. Shares of Ballarpur Industries, Pudumjee Pulp and AP Paper were up. The stock of Orient Paper rose by 3.57 per cent to close at Rs 142.05.

Heightened activity was seen on the scrip of Hexaware Technologies shot up after the company had announced of a stock split of its shares into 5 units of Rs 2 each. The stock surged ahead by Rs 63.85 to close at Rs 786.1.

The stock of Galaxy Entertainment froze at Rs 62.3 jumping 9.97 per cent from Friday's close. Buying interest was evident in the stock as close to 3 lakh shares were traded on the BSE. On Friday, the company had announced a preferential allotment of 20 lakh shares to Pantaloon Retail at Rs 44 per share.

The stock of Apar Industries ended marginally higher by 1.47 per cent at Rs 120.8, after it had confirmed of receipt of orders for its aluminium conductors worth about Rs 69 crore during Jan-Feb 2005.

Heightened activity was seen in the stocks of CESC, Escorts, UTI Bank and Visual Soft; they ended higher by a more than 4 per cent jump.

Stocks of PSU banks Allahabad Bank, UCO Bank, Bank of Baroda, Indian Overseas Bank, Bank of India and Andhra Bank lost ground.

Prominent gainers on the Nifty were GlaxoSmithKline Pharma, Hero Honda Motors, Maruti Udyog, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Dr Reddy's Lab.

Significant losers among the Nifty constituents were SCI, Tata Chemicals, Cipla, Wipro, REL, Bharti Televentures, GAIL and MTNL.

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