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Sensex falls 76 points to go below 4500 mark

Pivotals fell sharply on the Bombay Stock Exchange for the second consecutive day on Thursday following heavy selling pressure by institutional investors coupled with profit-taking by speculators, resulting into a sharp decline in the BSE Sensex by about 76 points over the previous close.

Though the market opened on a better note, it moved in a downward direction as the market players turned into sellers at the prime counters. Disappointed by the withdrawal of the insurance regulatory bill and subsequent political developments at the Centre, the foreign institutional investors and leading market players stayed away from the market, marketmen said.

The BSE sensex opened at 4527.91, touched the day's high of 4546.91, declined to the day's low of 4439.48, and later closed at 4447.06, showing a net loss of 75.95 points over the previous close of 4523.01.

The BSE-100 index also moved down by 31.92 points to 1937.45 points against the previous close of 1969.37 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices finished lower by 6.59 and 3.07 points to 430.85 and 200.76 points against the previous close of 437.44 and 203.83 points respectively.

The market sources further said that despite the change of market mood, the Reliance scrip was in the limelight on the BSE as well as on the National Stock Exchange.

Leading BSE brokers said that many of the index-based scrips have registered record gains during past seven trading session and said that such kind of downtrend was expected by them.

Friday is the last day of trading cycle and most of the operators were busy in squaring up their position, they added.

The total turnover on the screen-based trading system stood at Rs 11.4956 billion and the number of scrips traded were 2,557.

Reliance Industries topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 4.0052 billion, followed by ITC Rs 1.4724 billion, State Bank of India Rs 1.329 billion, TISCO Rs 753.3 million and Tata Tea Rs 480.8 million.

Hectic trading activity was also observed at the other counters like ACC Rs 346.3 million, Colgate Rs 185.8 million, Castrol Rs 178 million, Ranbaxy Rs 141.7 million, Reliance Cap Rs 115.5 million, Larsen and Toubro Rs 109.1 million, Hind Lever Rs 109.1 million, ABB Rs 79.3 million and MTNL Rs 78 million.

National Stock Exchange

Pivotals declined sharply on the first day of new trading settlement at the NSE on Thursday following heavy selling pressure from institutional investors and major market players, while highest number of trades were recorded at the exchange during the course of trading.

Reflecting the trend, the NSE-50 index opened on a better note at 1292.80, also the day's high, declined to the day's low of 1259.05, and later ended at 1269.65, showing a net loss of 23.30 points over the previous day's close of 1292.95 points.

The midcap index also moved down by 10.90 points to 1373.65 points over the previous close of 1384.55. The total turnover on the NSE reported during the day was at Rs 20.7872 billion.

Reliance Industries topped the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 6.4775 billion, followed by ITC Rs 3.7737 billion, State Bank Rs 1.994 billion, Tata Tea Rs 1.1996 billion and TISCO Rs 1.1796 billion.

UNI