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Week ends on a high note, Nifty 980.15

The upbeat trend since the beginning of the week continued and pivotals further gained on the National Stock Exchange.

Market sentiment changed favourably following reports of possible review in the sanctions by US Senate Task Force. Foreign institutional investors and local bull operators continued their buying spree pushing up the shares prices and indices.

Reflecting the uptrend, the NSE-50 Index or Nifty shot up by 19.10 pints to 980.15 over the previous close of 961.05 points. The Dollar NSE-50 Index also went up by 16.65 points to 798.75 points from 782.10 of the last working day.

The Midcap Index improved by 15.50 points to 1424.45 points as compared to 1408.95 points the previous day.

FIIs purchased shares for Rs 498.91 million against their lower sales of Rs 216.84 million, indicating inflow of foreign exchange worth rs 282.07 million in the NSE today.

The total turnover, involving 55.55 million shares in 185,744 trades was Rs 13.73 billion and the debentures traded value was Rs 550 thousand.

592 securities advanced, 324 declined and 98 remained unchanged in the market. 47 securities have hit their price bands today. Tobacco giant ITC registered the highest turnover of 2.58 billion, followed by SBI (Rs 2.23 billion), Satyam Computers (Rs 2.10 billion), Reliance (Rs 935.4 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 504.7 million), ACC (Rs 479.1 million), L&T and Telco (Rs 427.9 million each), Tata Tea (Rs 373.4 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 339.2 million), Castrol (Rs 303.8 million), Tisco (Rs 294.5 million) and Hindustan Lever (Rs 225 million).

The other counters which witnessed hectic activity were Bajaj Auto (Rs 187 million), BHEL (Rs 154 million), Dr Reddy's (Rs 143.1 million), Zee Tele (Rs 137.4 million), BSES (Rs 135 million), MTNL (Rs 106.4 million), Square D Software (Rs 86.8 million), Silverline (Rs 81.2 million), BFL Software (80.8 million), ICICI (Rs 80.3 million), Bank of Baroda (Rs 72.6 million) and NIIT (Rs 61.7 million).

SBI recorded the highest gain of 6.27 per cent increase to Rs 227.90, followed by ICICI by 5.37 per cent to Rs 79.40, HDFC Bank (4.99 per cent to Rs 63.15), BSES and HPCL (4.38 per cent each to Rs 165.70 and and Rs 361) respectively.

Indo-Gulf topped the losers list with 3.37 per cent loss to Rs 31.50, M&M by 2.14 per cent to Rs 200.90, India Hotels (1.74 per cent to Rs 378.80), Hindalco (1.26 per cent Rs 655.65) and Castrol (0.59 per cent to Rs 584.85.)

The wholesale debt market of NSE witnessed trading worth Rs 3.06 billion. The zero-coupon government bond maturing in 2000 (series III) was traded for Rs 400 million at a weighted yield of 11.15 per cent. The 11.55 per cent government. Loan maturing in 2001 was also traded for Rs 400 million at a weighted yield of 11.45 per cent. The certificate of deposit issued by IDBI maturing on September 12, 1998 was traded for Rs 150 million at a yield of 10 per cent. The total turnover in debentures was Rs 79.45 million.

UNI