RIL leads small recovery

MUMBAI, May 29: After a weak spell, pivotals led by Reliance, Lakme and others rallied on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today on emergence of short covering coupled with speculative buying. The recovery was also due to fresh buying support by foreign institutional investors (FIIs). The closing rates showed widespread small to modest gains. The volume of business recovered further.

The BSE-sensitive index started steady at 3684.77 but declined thereafter and touched low at 3659.39. The Sensex, however, recovered smartly to finish at 3724.11 with a modest gain of 38.80 points compared the the previous level of 3685.31. The BSE-100 opened at 1585.93, fell to a low of 1577.30 but recovered to finish at 1600.30, with a gain of 14.15 points compared to the previous level of 1586.15.Brokers said the sentiment was boosted mainly on heavy speculative buying in the Reliance counter following rumors of a bonus issue. The re-entry of FIIs, which picked up Reliance, E I Hotel, Telco, SBI and Larsen induced fresh support from speculators to other blue chip counters.The rally was also due to technical considerations of the market following the downtrend in the last few sessions and also due to some encouraging corporate results announced by several companies this week.The total turnover amounted to Rs 585.85 crore. Reliance topped the list with a turnover of 70.46 lakh shares valued at Rs 203.37 crore followed by SBI of Rs 99.27 crore, ITC of Rs 59.00 crore, Telco of Rs 32.25 crore and BHEL of Rs 21.58 crore. Reliance spurted up by Rs 13.25 to Rs 296.25 on speculative support and SBI recovered by Rs 4.75 to Rs 305.50 on short covering. ITC gained Rs 3.75 to 431 and BHEL remained steady at Rs 419.

On the National Stock Exchange, share prices moved up moderately on buying support. The NSE-50 index opened at 1024.75, registered the day’s high of 1040.05, low of 1023.80 points and closed at 1038.20 as against its previous close of 1027.00, showing a gain of 11.20 points. The mid-cap index closed at 1102.95 against 1096.45 points, gaining 6.50 points. The total turnover on NSE was Rs 1294.23 crore.