Political uncertainty pulls Sensex down 15 points
Mumbai—Political uncertainty at the centre following the threat given by the Samata Party to remove its support to the NDA, combined with the sharp fall in India’s weightage in the Emerging Markets Free (EMF) index by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), led to a selling spree on the first day of the new settlement beginning Monday at the BSE.
The benchmark indices, after moving in an extremely narrow range, closed in negative territory. The Sensex shed 15 points while S&P CNX Nifty was down 3 points. Selling pressure was more apparent in pharma and stocks like HLL, Grasim, GACL, L&T, TISCO, ITC, SBI and others.
The Sensex opened fractionally up at 3656.09 and later fluctuated in the narrow range of 3681.19 and 3630.60, before closing at 3640.10, a moderate loss of 14.93 points. Nifty also lost 3.35 points to close at 1169.45.
While all the companies, which have increased the FII limit to 49 per cent, are likely to get higher weightage in the MSCI India index, companies like HLL and ITC’s weightage has fallen due to lowering of the weightage for food and beverages, sources said.
Most of the second-layer stocks like Bata India, PSI Datasystems, Mastek, Bausch & Lomb, Trygent Technologies, Shyam Telecom, Titan Industries, Television 18 and Supreme Industries were locked in the upper circuit of 16 per cent on the back of sizeable buying.
The turnover was relatively up at Rs 1,422.98 crore at the BSE over last Friday’s turnover of Rs 1,396.75 crore.
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New entrants in MSCI index rise
Mumbai--The new shares included in the revamped Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) emerging markets free index rose in an otherwise flat day following expectations of increased foreign-fund buying in these stocks while some of the shares dropped from the index declined.
New inclusions such as Reliance Petroleum Ltd, ended at Rs 54, up by 1.84 per cent; non-durable consumer goods maker Dabur India closed at Rs 73.85, up 5.5 per cent; private sector HDFC Bank wound up at Rs 237.05, up 0.83 per cent; telecom carrier Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd ended up 0.51 per cent at Rs 346.60; and, Britannia Industries closed higher by 2.04 per cent at Rs 650.65.
The shares that witnessed a fall following their deletion from the index are Jaiprakash Industries and Escorts Ltd. Jaiprakash closed lower by 1.34 per cent at Rs 33.25 and Escorts ended down by 0.63 per cent at Rs 78.95.
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