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S.Muralidhar

THE stock market continued its dismal run on Monday and the Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensitive Index (Sensex) broke the resistance level of 2,950 points.

After opening on a strong note at 2,955.19 points, the Sensex touched a high of 2,965.37 points intraday. As Monday's session progressed, a build up of selling pressure in prominent index stocks such as Infosys Technologies, led to a sharp fall to an intraday low of 2,934.78 points, before the session closed for the day at 2,942.78 points, down 7.22 points.

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Amongst the Sensex stocks there was an equal number of advances and declines. However, the traded value of stocks that lost ground was a much higher Rs 266.45 crore. The major losers among them were Cipla, Grasim, Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computer, Zee Telefilms, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Hindustan Petroleum.

Infosys Technologies was in the limelight on Monday after announcing that the sexual harassment lawsuit, which it was grappling with in the US is finally being settled out of court for $3 million. The settlement has been reached with Infosys' ex-employee. However, despite the high payout, Mr Nandan M. Nilekani, CEO, President and Managing Director of Infosys, has said that the company's earnings guidance provided on April 10 for the quarter ending June 30, 2003 and the year ending March 31, 2004 will remain unchanged and that this settlement does not materially impact the earnings guidance.

The Infosys stock, which has been under considerable pressure since early April due to a lower than estimated earnings guidance, fell on Monday after the news of the out of court settlement reached the market. Though the Infosys American Depository Shares gained about a percentage point at $42 on the Nasdaq market , the stock was not in favour in the Indian bourses.

Infosys lost 4.77 per cent during Monday and after declining by Rs 139.75, closed at Rs 2,788.85. Infosys has a weightage of 7.62 per cent in the BSE sensex.

Reliance Industries and Hindustan Lever, which have weightages of 15.03 per cent and 12.5 per cent respectively, were both nearly stagnant. The loss in the index came from other stocks.

The major gainers amongst sensex stocks were ITC, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, GlaxoSmithKline, Colgate Palmolive and Castrol.

Banking stocks were in focus on Monday with both the private and public sector witnessing heavy buying. The big gainers amongst banking stocks during Monday's session were Punjab National Bank, up a whopping 18 per cent, Bank of Baroda, up over 10 per cent, Andhra Bank, rose 7.14 per cent, Oriental Bank was up 6.37 per cent, Canara Bank, up 5.24 per cent, Bank of India, up 3.97 per cent, Union Bank, Corporation Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, Syndicate Bank and Dena Bank.

A number of public sector undertakings (PSU) stocks also posted gains on Monday. The major gainers were Indian Oil Corporation, which closed higher by 6.39 per cent, Bharat Petroleum, Chennai Petroleum, Dredging Corporation, HMT Ltd and IBP Ltd. PSU losers included Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, National Aluminium, IDBI and ITI.

Amongst the biggest gainers from the A-group were Hindustan Oil Exploration (19.9 per cent), J&K Bank (14.44 per cent), Novartis India (12.03 per cent), India Cements (9.18 per cent), Bharat Forge (8.72 per cent), Thermax (6.9 per cent) and Arvind Mills (6.75 per cent).

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