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Local bulls, FIs negate gains on FII-buying; Sensex down 53 points, Nifty sheds 20 points

After working wonders for the market with their continuous support for nearly a fortnight, the foreign institutional investors continued their active participation. But their impact was moderate on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange during the week ended May 21.

The Sensex fell by 53 points over the last seven days.

The market and the Sensex oscillated wildly, without registering any significant incident during the week.

The BSE-30, which had shown tremendous gains for the last fortnight, showed lacklustre performance since the beginning of the fresh week on May 17, when the Sensex dropped by nearly 35 points. The downfall continued in subsequent days, with the exception on May 18 and 19, when the chart showed slight variation with moderate gains of 45 and 39 points respectively. But the joy was short-lived.

It slid again since May 20, as in the rest of the week, mainly due to heavy-selling by local institutions at higher levels either for profit-booking or for squaring up their positions.

As markets drifted lower on rumours of interest rate changes by the US Federal Reserve, the FIIs incurred heavy losses on Monday. They returned subsequently when Reliance Industries announced a 16 per cent increase in the selling prices of all their commodities.

They continued with their routine of heavy buying, but it was negated by selling pressure from local bulls.

The BSE-30 index which opened higher on Monday at 4113.42 points, often fluctuated between the bad and the ugly throughout the week.

It reached to the highest peak of 4197.08 points and a lowest of 3888.81 points during the last week and finally closed at 4015.75 points, registering a loss of 59.72 points as compared to its last Friday's close of 4075.47 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 opened at 1756.28 points and closed considerably lower at 1728.67 points. During the week, it touched a high of 1806.87 points and a low of 1683.22 points during the week and ended 20.76 points lower than the previous week's close of 1749.43 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex also ended lower after starting at 392.09 and 152.74 points. It rolled down by 1.02 points and 0.57 points when it ended today at 393.43 and 153.22 points respectively.

While Telco and Tisco led the equities' jump which were joined by Reliance, State Bank of India, BHEL, L&T, Pentafour and Tata Tea.

At the National Stock Exchange, the scenario was no different as the FIIs ruled the market sentiment throughout the week.

The FIIs were mostly on the buying counters but the share prices suffered setbacks due to heavy selling from local institutions during the major part of the week.

The S&P CNX Nifty ended lower after opening at 1164.45 points during the beginning of the week. It ended at 1145.85 points as compared to its last week's close of 1165.35 points, registering a loss of 19.50 points.

The S&P CNX Nifty Junior index opened at 1992.75 points and closed at 1990.35 points. Last week, it closed at 1992.75. Thus, it lost a mere 2.4 points during the week.

The S&P CNX Defty started at 933.70 points and ended at 928.95 after considerable fluctuations during the week. It lost by 15.60 points from its last Friday's close of 944.55 points.

The S&P CNX 500 however lost by 3.18 points to end at 781.83 points while the S&P CNX Midcap 200 index gained by 1.55 points to end at 674.65 points from last week's close of 673.10 points.

UNI

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