Sensex falls 42 pts as Dow, Nasdaq slump to below-support levels

Our Markets Bureau

Mumbai, Aug 31: All-round selling was witnessed on Friday on the domestic bourses where players got panicky following reports of both Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq closing below the support and psychological levels of 10000 and 1800 respectively.

Following this, the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) pressed the sell button, mainly for the new economy stocks. Local players followed suit and the selling pressure continued in new as well as old economy stocks. Domestic share indices closed sharply lower from their overnight levels.

The fall in the Sensex on Friday was sharp in the recent times as throughout the day it moved in an intra-day range of less than 35 points but at the end of the session, it was down with a net loss of 42.19 points at 3244.68. The S&P CNX Nifty of the NSE also shed 10.60 points to settle at 1053.55.

Tech stocks in domestic bourses declined following a sustained fall in the US markets which shrank on Thursday after networking major Sun Microsystems warned that it would not post the profit analysts expect. Sun shares declined as much as 22 per cent. Following the warning from Sun, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 171.32 points to 9919.58. Nasdaq lost 51.49 points to 1,791.68.

In the domestic market on Friday, Infosys Technologies witnessed heavy selling on Friday too and the selling was so heavy that the stock lost more than Rs 300 in the last two sessions. Infy was down 4.86 per cent to Rs 3,529, Satyam Computer (down 2.85 per cent) and NIIT (down 3.22 per cent).