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Sensex tumbles by 150 points

Waywardness continued on the country's premier Bombay Stock Exchange today as equity prices crashed on imposition of sanctions by the US and other developed countries against India for conducting nuclear tests on May 11 and 13 this year at Pokhran and massive unloading by the foreign institutional investors.

The BSE Sensex finished at a 20-month low -- 3143.10 points. The absence of buying support from domestic institutions added to the Sensex woes.

The FIIs sold heavily at MTNL, Hindustan Lever, BHEL, RIL, ITC, TELCO and SBI counters, leading brokers said. Being the last day of settlement most of the members were busy in squaring up their position.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensex (30 scrip) opened with selling pressure and quoted at 3234.56 points, it gradually came down to 3130.11 points before closing at 3143.10 points suffering a loss of 149.23 points as compared to previous close of 3292.33 points.

Leading brokers said that market is totally in a confusion over various issues like the Securities and Exchange Board of India's ban on short sales, sanctions imposed by the European countries, continuous selling pressure from the FIIs, fluctuations in the forex market.

Turmoil in the Asian capital market aided the downtrend at the Indian bourses, though Japanese yen recovered against the US dollar after touching eight-year low on Tuesday.

The total business volume on the BSE also came down further by Rs 1.22 billion to Rs 6.98 billion as against previous turnover of Rs 8.20 billion. However, the volume of shares traded rose to 45 million from 44.3 million.

The ITC recorded highest turnover of Rs 1.67 billion followed by SBI Rs 798.3 million, RIL Rs 630.6 million and Satyam Comp Rs 567.4 million.

UNI

UNI