Mumbai, Feb 1: Fears over a weak rupee, hike in interest rates by the USFederal Bank and the poor results by commodities-based companies resulted ina general gloom in the stock market. The BSE Sensex gained 10.25 pointstoday, solely due to the upswing in software stocks, which were buoyed byforeign institutional buying.Dealers said that news of major relaxations in import norms for the foodindustry had impacted commodity stocks. The HLL scrip showed a fall of morethan four per cent. Local brands are apprehending a swamp by foreign brands.There was very little interest from fund managers in most of the majorstocks, which move the market, market sources said. In the event that the USFederal rate hikes are effected, India in common with other emerging marketsare apprehending a flight of capital away from them.
"We are anxious to see what kind of allocations will be coming our way," abroker said.
Among the pivotals, Reliance remained the star performer. After opening atRs 330, the stock steadily improved to its all-time high of Rs 339.50. Onclosing, it showed a gain of more than three per cent.
Tuesday being the last day of settlement on the NSE, operators were anxiousto transfer their positions to the BSE, so the buying on the latter boostedthe sentiments to a certain extent, leading to the gain in the Sensex.Domestic financial institutions bought into certain scrips such as SBI,Reliance, Tata Steel among others.
The uptrend in the Nasdaq and Dow Jones was responsible for a rally ininfotech stocks, dealers said. Infosys showed an improvement of over threeper cent. Among the other index-based counter, Bhel, L&T, ICICI, ITC and SBIalso showed a gain of over one per cent each.
Besides HLL, NIIT was the main index-based counter which showed a fall ofmore than one per cent. Telco and Ranbaxy too showed a negative close.The BSE sensitive index opened modestly up at 5217.65 and later fluctuatedin a range of 5232.84 and 5127.79 before closing at 5215.54 as againstyesterday's close of 5205.29, netting a minor gain of 10.25 points. TheBSE-100 index shot up by 59.73 points to 2935.10 from previous close of2875.37.
The number of advances showed a significant jump of 1224. At the same time,number of declines was at 873. Around 218 stocks remained unchanged. Thetrading volume for the day was Rs 3936 crore on the BSE.
IT stocks which showed impressive gains were Pentamedia Graphics, HCL,Rolta, Global Tele, Silverline, Wipro, Hughes and HCL Technologies - whichhit the upper circuit - DSQ Software, Satyam Computers and Aptech.
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