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Sensex falls by further 52.31 points

Pivotals drifted further lower on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Friday following speculative selling pressure from local operators and foreign institutional investors on the last day of current trading settlement.

Market sentiments on the Indian bourses remained affected on Friday in wake of record fall in share prices on Hong Kong market and subsequent impact on the markets in Europe and the United States, leading BSE members said.

After witnessing an intraday fall of about 87 points, the BSE Sensex recovered partially to close at 3957.46 points, still showing a net loss of 52.31 points over the previous close of 3957.46 points.

Similarly, the broadbased BSE-100 Index drifted lower by 22.93 points to 1703.43 points as against the previous close of 1726.36 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices closed at 382.03 and 175.41 points over the previous close of 387.33 and 178.04 points respectively, showing net losses of 5.30 and 2.63 points respectively.

According to marketmen, the prime scrips like Reliance, ITC, State Bank, TISCO, TELCO and ACC reported major decline against their previous closing levels.

The Unit Trust of India made small purchases at select counters in the late afternoon, while the FIIs stayed away from any purchase, leading BSE brokers said.

BSE brokers said that most of the operators were busy in squaring up their positions in view of end of settlement. The Diwali holidays beginning next week from October 28 also restricted them from taking long-term positions, they said.

Meanwhile, business volume on the BSE on Friday registered a sharp increase by Rs 3.1 billion to Rs 11 billion as against Thursday's turnover of Rs 7.9 billion.

Tobacco giant ITC topped the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 3.6 billion, followed by Reliance Rs 3.3 billion, Tata Tea Rs 523.6 million and TISCO Rs 355.5 million.

Hectic activity was also observed at the other counters like Castrol Rs 325 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 132.4 million, L&T Rs 129.7 million, ICICI Rs 115.6 million, ACC Rs 110.4 million, TELCO Rs 107.4 million, MTNL Rs 102.2 million, BHEL Rs 97.3 million, Colgate Rs 69.2 million and Escorts Rs 69 million.

Good transaction was witnessed at some other counters in B1 group like LML, Tata Vashist, Bh Earth Mov, Satyam Comp, ICICI Bank, Infosys Tech and Pentafour.

UNI