Lacklustre day for the markets

01 July 2005

Markets opened the day on a weak note following the decline in US markets yesterday. The indices declined in opening trades as profit booking emerged after the strong rally over the last two days which saw the indices scaling new all time highs.

The indices managed to recover soon enough as strong buying in PSU bank stocks emerged. SBI was the best performer in this space and was trading with gains of over 3 per cent before noon.

Though the Sensex bounced back into the green, the Nifty traded with losses for most of the day. The steep fall in ONGC was behind the significant divergence between the movement of Sensex and Nifty. ONGC has a much higher weight on the Nifty than the Sensex.

The Sensex traded in a narrow range till late in the afternoon moving around yesterday's closing levels. The last one hour saw fresh buying which pushed the Sensex firmly above the 7200-mark. The Nifty, however, could not recover from the body blow dealt by ONGC.

The Sensex managed to close above 7200 for the first time at 7211, up 17 points and the Nifty at 2212, a loss of 9 points from yesterday's close. Nifty July futures discount to the spot index narrowed to 6 points from yesterday's 29 points.

Among Nifty stocks, Glaxo, Larsen & Toubro and SBI were the major percentage gainers while ONGC, HDFC Bank and Wipro were the major losers.