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Bull renew support; Nifty gains moderate gains, 872.25

After initial slide on heavy speculative selling pressure, pivotals improved towards the end with renewed buying support by bull operators and closed marginally higher on the National Stock Exchange today.

Reflecting the uptrend, the S&P CNX Nifty moved up by 12.15 points to 872.25 points from 860.10 points of the previous day.

The CNX Nifty Junior index firmed up by 11.60 points to 1464.90 points from 1453.30 points while S&P CNX Defty gained 8 points to 701.20 points from 693.20 points. The S&P CNX 500 edged up by 5.42 points to 592.77 points from 587.35 points and the CNX Midcap 200 index rose 4.64 points to 515.52 points against 510.88 points of the previous day.

The total turnover, involving 46.80 million shares in 192,456 trades was Rs 13.19 billion and the debentures traded value was Rs 876,000.

About 582 scrips advanced, 300 declined and 95 remained unchanged. About 25 securities have hit their price bands today.

Foreign institutional investors sold heavily for Rs 263.59 million against their lower investment of Rs 49.09, indicating an outflow of foreign funds to the tune of Rs 214.49 million today.

Tobacco giant ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.74 billion, followed by Satyam Computer (Rs 2.14 billion), Zee Telefilms (Rs 1.31 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 1.23 billion), SBI (Rs 752.7 million), Reliance (Rs 505.6 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 366.8 million), Castrol (Rs 333. 2 million), Tata Tea (Rs 314.3 million), ACC (Rs 286.3 million), Telco (Rs 257.9 million), L&T (Rs 158.5 million) and BFL Software (Rs 158.2 million).

Other actively traded counters were: Colgate (Rs 154.4 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 146.6 million), Silverline (Rs 141.5 million), BHEL (Rs 138.7 million), MTNL (Rs 120.2 million), Tisco (Rs 112.8 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 102.4 million), HCL-HP (Rs 99.4 million), Digital Equipment (Rs 90.2 million), Software Solution (Rs 75.5 million), Rolta (Rs 73.2 million) and Bajaj Auto (Rs 69.9 million).

Mahindra recorded the highest gain of 7.54 per cent to Rs 149.80, followed by BHEL 4.99 per cent to Rs 220.75, Telco 3.06 per cent to Rs 136.20, ACC and MTNL three per cent each to Rs 1132.90 and Rs 192.55 respectively.

India Hotel suffered the highest loss of 3.92 per cent to Rs 300.25, followed by Cochin Refineries 3.66 per cent to Rs 226.20, HDFC Bank 2.14 per cent to Rs 61.75, East India Hotels 2.10 per cent to Rs 200.75 and IPCL 1.51 per cent to Rs 48.95.

The wholesale debt market of NSE witnessed trades worth Rs 3.85 billion. The 11.55 per cent government loan maturing in 2001 was traded actively for Rs 750 million at a weighted yield of 11.45 per cent. The 11.68 per cent government loan maturing in 2002 was traded for Rs 270 million at a weighted yield of 11.61 per cent.

Ten repo trades amounting to Rs 1.55 billion were traded at repo rates varying between 6.90 per cent to 7.25 per cent for a repo term of 12/14 days. The turnover in debentures was Rs 561,000.

UNI