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S. Muralidhar

AFTER opening the week on a strong note and totting up a massive two per cent (116 points) jump on Monday, the Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex and the other major stock indices continued their upward march.

However, Tuesday's movements in the markets were tentative, unlike the unhindered buying support that was witnessed during the previous session.

As a result of profit booking setting in early into the trading session on Tuesday, the BSE Sensex slid quickly into the red after opening higher at about 5,187.73 points. It had closed at 5,160.85 points on Monday. The initial spell of profit booking was evident among counters in the information technology, automotive and public sector undertaking segments.

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The build-up of selling pressure during the rest of the session kept the Sensex in the red for the most part of the day, except for a brief spell post-noon, when the index bobbed above the previous day's close. However, buying support and renewed interest in select information technology stocks and index heavy weights pushed the Sensex back into positive territory towards the last one hour of trading.

The Sensex closed Tuesday's session at 5,186 points, a rise of about 25 points from the previous close. Intra-day, it had touched a high of 5,204 points and a low of 5,123.8 points. A total of 3.35-crore Sensex shares changed hands and out of the 30 Sensex stocks, 17 gained, while 13 were losers. The fact that information technology stocks were leading the pack of counters that were battered the most on Tuesday was even more evident from the much smaller gains that the tech-heavy National Stock Exchange's (NSE) S&P CNX Nifty Index posted on Tuesday. The fifty-share Nifty index was up only a marginal 0.05 per cent at 1,658.50 points.

Among the major losers from the IT and software sector that are also Nifty constituents were NIIT (down 3.94 per cent), Wipro (down 3.11 per cent at Rs 1,565) and HCL Technologies (down 2.58 per cent). Also on the NSE, Infosys Technologies was marginally down by about 0.5 per cent, while Satyam Computers was up about 0.78 per cent.

On the BSE, the four stocks that helped boost the sagging Sensex towards the close of the session were Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank, ITC and State Bank of India.

Reliance Industries closed the day on a strong note, though right through the session, the stock was trading in negative territory. Buying support towards the end of the session was instrumental in it thereby posting a two per cent jump in price at close. The stock crossed the Rs 500 level and closed at Rs 501.90 after testing an intra-day low of Rs 486.

ICICI Bank was up 3.55 per cent and ITC and SBI closed higher by nearly one per cent each. The other gainers amongst the Sensex stocks were Hindalco, Satyam Computers, Tata Motors, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, HDFC Bank, Grasim Industries, Cipla, Hero Honda Motors, ACC, MTNL, Gujarat Ambuja Cements and Zee Telefilms.

The Sensex stocks that were losers included Infosys Technologies, HLL, Ranbaxy Laboratories, HDFC, L&T, Bajaj Auto, HPCL, ONGC, BHEL, Tata Power, BSES and Bharti Tele Ventures.

Tuesday's session also witnessed selling pressure in PSU stocks. Some of the losers from this segment were Steel Authority of India, GAIL India, BPCL, Engineers India and IBP Ltd. Some of the IT and software stocks that were pushed to lower levels were i-flex Technologies, Polaris Labs, Moser Baer, HCL Infosys, E-Serve International, Hexaware Ltd, Tata Infotech and Rolta India.

However, small and mid-cap banking and pharmaceutical stocks closed higher. Mastek and i-Gate Global were up on increased buying support.

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