Pivotals suffer setback

MUMBAI, JULY 18. Select key stocks suffered a sharp setback pushing the Sensex below the 3400-mark on the Bombay Stock Exchange today in the wake of selling pressure from investors as well as local institutions.

Foreign institutional investors, who have slowed down their activity considerably, however, were net buyers and reportedly picked up small lots of shares of Infosys Technologies, Wipro and L&T.

The BSE sensitive index opened marginally up at 3434.94 and improved further to the day's high of 3446.18 on early buying support, prompted by a smart rally on the Wall Street that lifted the Dow Jones Industrial Average by about 135 points and the Nasdaq composite index by 38.20 points yesterday on some signs of progress in the profits of companies sensitive to the economic cycle.

However, lack of support and continuous offerings had its impact on sentiment and the benchmark gradually moved downwards to close at 3383.41 against 3431.93, a net loss of 48.52 points or 1.41 per cent. The BSE-100 index eased further by 4.98 points to 1598.87 from 1603.85.

There were strong rumours in the market that Unit Trust of India which has been facing financial problems, sold a sizable chunk of shares and that certain banks with which the fund was negotiating for a line of credit have refused to provide the loan. Investors and brokers, market sources said, were not willing to make any commitments in the prevailing situation.Meanwhile, stock brokers from all over the country have formed an all-India brokers' forum, Securities Industry Association of India, to protect and promote the interest of its members and have decided to refrain from trading on July 23 in protest against the `sudden implementation' of rolling settlement and the ban on badla.

- PTI

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Section  : Business
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