Shares remain subdued

MUMBAI, July 28: Pivotals generally showed a narrow movement on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today mainly due to lack of speculative sup...

MUMBAI, July 28: Pivotals generally showed a narrow movement on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today mainly due to lack of speculative support coupled with limited buying by foreign institutional investors (FIIs). The new account commenced steady and share prices moved both side on alternative bouts of small buying and selling.

The BSE sensitive index moved in the range of 4163.53 and 4197.21 before closing at 4181.48 with a small loss of 8.33 points compared to the previous level of 4189.81. The BSE-100 index, however, edged up by 1.53 points to 1824.63 from last Friday’s close of 1823.10.

Brokers said while FIIs and domestic institutions made negligible purchases mostly in side stocks and B1 shares, operators were more active than institutions and bought shares from the speculative group. Foreign funds reported to have purchased in Britannia, Gujarat Alkali, Kinetic Honda, Merriend, GSFC and others.

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Operators had shifted their focus to Atlas Copco, Ceat, Finolex Cables, Parke Davis, Raymond, Tata Chemicals, Thermax and Tamilnadu Petro which had gone into no-delivery period. Brokers said shares always attract brisk speculative buying when they enter no-delivery period.

ITC recorded the highest turnover of Rs 223.35 crore of the total volume of business of Rs 743.08 cror followed by Reliance Rs 108.23 crore, SBI Rs 103.60 crore, Tata Steel Rs 51.20 crore and Telco Rs 40.73 crore. ITC dropped sharply by Rs 28 to Rs 476.50 on bull unloading. SBI lost Rs 1.50 at Rs 318. However, Reliance improved by Rs 1.75 to Rs 352.75 and Telco by Rs 4.25 to Rs 388. Tata Steel was fractionally up at 212.75 from Rs 212.50.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE) pivotals ended marginally lower in lacklustre trading on poor support from investors. The NSE-50 index closed at 1181.65, showing a loss of 3.40 points. The Midcap index closed at 1295.60, showing a loss of 3.75 points. The total turnover was Rs 1502.25 crore.