Mumbai, June 8: The post-closing session at NSE brought in new set of surprises for the broking community. Brokers said the price differential between the actual closing at 3.30 pm and the post-closing session led to confusion in the market. Closing prices of several pivotals like Reliance, MTNL, Digital Equipment, ABB and Tata Tea registered a hefty premium on the NSE. While some brokers attributed the premiums to the continuous short covering on NSE (today was the last day of settlement), others said this could be due to a technical snag on account of the introduction of Y2K compliant software version 6.91 released on Monday. While senior officials of NSE were unavailable for comments despite repeated attempts, a release issued by the exchange said there were ``some problems faced by some members during today's closing session. As an interim measure, the exchange has decided to temporarily discontinue the pre-open and closing sessions. ``These sessions will be resumed after all the apparent problems areresolved,'' said the release. "The exchange released their new software version today. This led to a further slow down in the system and the orders got piled up which eventually got routed into the system during the post-closing session," said a leading NSE broker, in the light of the 13 lakh shares which got traded the Reliance counter during the post-closing session.
While the gap between the closing prices of stocks like Reliance and MTNL was restricted to about Rs 5-7, in the case of Brittania the price gap expanded to over Rs 144. At 3.30 pm while the Brittania counter registered a price of Rs 1,266, after the post-closing session the stock witnessed a closing price of Rs 1,404, a gain of 8 per cent. This , said brokers, left investors in a state of confusion, considering there were sellers at Rs 1,266 and buyers at Rs 1,255 queued on the terminals.
"If we consider the closing prices of these pivotals registered at the NSE, the BSE Sensex should open with a gap of over 100 points on Wednesday,"said a veteran BSE broker. NSE is making a detailed analysis to isolate the problem.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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