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Sensex loses ground

Led by Telco, pivotals drifted lower on the Bombay Stock Exchange in the first day of current settlement, following selling pressure from foreign institutional investors and lack of buying support from speculators and domestic institutions.

"Holiday mood prevailed, forcing market operators to postpone their commitment," market sources said.

The weak sentiments at the Hong Kong market too affected local trade, leading FIIs to sell on prime counters.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE sensitive index opened at 3969.75, touched the day's high of 3979.53, the low of 3914.96 and closed at 3934.33 points, showing a net loss of 23.13 points over the previous close of 3957.46.

Similarly, the broadbased-BSE 100 index dipped lower by 8.88 points to 1694.55 against Friday's close of 1694.55 points.

The BSE-200 and dollex indices closed lower by 1.61 and 2.59 points to 380.42 and 174.55 points as against the previous 382.03 and 175.41 points respectively.

Leading BSE brokers said the FIIs sold considerable amount of shares at the Telco counter.

The market will remain closed from Tuesday for Diwali till November 1, excluding Thursday, October 30, when it will open for one hour -- from 1830 to 1930 hours -- for Diwali muhurt trading.

Total turnover on screen based trading system came down heavily to Rs 5.74 billion as against Friday's Rs. 11.03 billion. ITC Ltd topped the list by registering Rs 1.63 billion. It was followed by Reliance (Rs 1.31 billion), SBI (Rs 662.2 million), Tata Tea (Rs 551.7 million) and L &T (Rs 158.2 million).

Hectic activity was witnessed at other counters like Telco (Rs 143.1 million), Tisco (Rs 128.1 million), Castrol Ind (Rs 123.9 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 70.7 million), MTNL (Rs 61.6 million), HDFC Ltd (Rs 56.5 million), Hind Lever (Rs 54.7 million), Hero Honda (Rs 53 million) and ACC (Rs 43 million).

In the B1 group, good transactions were reported in Gas Auth, Morgan Stan, Dreading Cer, Matushi TV, Leading Edge, Infotech Enterprise, Super Spin, Jamna Auto, Rasdhar Agro, Refl Pet, Z F Steering, Ortens Infor, Zentich Ltd , I M D Jyoti and I D Textile.

UNI