The Hindu Business Line : Profit-taking checks progress

AFTER consistently hitting new all-time high levels, the major indices went through an uncertain, nervous patch on Wednesday. The mid-week session witnessed the setting in of hesitant trading and the uncertainty consequently led to profit booking towards the close of trading hours.

The benchmark indices started the day on an upbeat note and continued institutional buying support helped boost the BSE Sensitive Index (Sensex) and the NSE's S&P CNX Nifty index both of which touched new high levels. But, profit booking and the pull out of support for index heavyweights by the major institutional investors led to a quick slide in the indices towards the close of the session.

However, though there were a number of losers amongst the frontline index stocks, which led to the BSE Sensex to close below the red line on Wednesday, there were quite a few stocks amongst the mid-cap and small-cap universe that posted handsome gains.

The BSE Sensex opened the day on a strong note at 7,373.9 points and quickly climbed to 7,393 points, the index's all-time high level. But, during the last hour of trade, the 30-share index nose-dived to a low of 7,334 points, before finally closing at 7,343 points.

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Nearly a crore index shares changed hands during Wednesday's session. Gainers and losers amongst the index stocks were nearly equally divided at 16:14, but volumes were low at Rs 474 crore.

Amongst the gainers from Sensex stocks were BHEL, Grasim Industries, Hindalco, HLL, L&T, Maruti Udyog, ONGC, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Reliance Industries, Satyam Computers, SBI, Tata Steel, Tata Power and Wipro. The major losers were Bharti TeleVentures, ACC, Hero Honda Motors, HDFC, ITC, Infosys Technologies, Tata Motors and TCS.

Although the Sensex was down marginally, the other major sectoral and non-sectoral indices were seen closing higher. Indices such as the BSE 100, BSE PSU, BSE Midcap, BSE Smallcap and BSE Bankex were all in positive territory on Wednesday.

The BSE PSU index of public sector undertakings was one of the big gainers with a gain of 0.86 per cent at the close of trade. Amongst the big gainers in this index were Allahabad Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Container Corporation, Corporation Bank, Dena Bank, Nalco, National Fertilisers, Neyveli Lignite, SAIL, UCO Bank and Vijaya Bank.

At the National Stock Exchange, the story at the close of trade on Wednesday was a little different with the 50-share Nifty index settling down with a gain of about 4.6 points. The Nifty too tracked and behaved akin to the Sensex till the last hour of trade and only a buying support in a few counters helped pull it up barely into the black at the end.

Major gainers from the Nifty were Tata Chemicals, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Dabur, VSNL, MTNL and IPCL.

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