Sensex drops 177 points

The downward trend continued in the stock markets for the third day in a row on Tuesday with the Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index closing below the 15000-level by losing nearly 177 points as selling pressure in heavyweight stocks, mainly in banking, realty and metal sectors, showed no signs of lessening.

The 30-share Sensex of the BSE ended at 11-week low of 14889.25, a fall from Monday’s close of 15066.10. The S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange dipped by 51.15 points to end at 4,449.80. Marketmen said the bourses saw high level of volatility throughout the day on alternate bouts of buying and selling from domestic as well as foreign investors. The Sensex tumbled to the year’s lowest level of 14645.31 in afternoon trade, raising fears that the market might even come down to touch the 12000 level shortly amid concerns about further monetary policy tightening by the Reserve Bank of India in a bid to rein in inflation. The late recovery from the day’s low was attributed to fairly heavy buying by domestic institutional investors, who were believed to be engaged in salvage operations. Asian Indices ended down by 1.13 per cent to 4.21 per cent.

Rupee declines further


The rupee is fast approaching the crucial 43 level as the unit lost nine paise at 42.96/97 against the dollar on Tuesday with demand from oil companies for dollar continuing amid inadequate supply of the U.S. currency and sluggish equity markets.

At the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee resumed on a promising note at Rs. 42.84/86 a dollar but later came under pressure and fell to 42.97 level as oil corporates stepped up dollar purchases. — PTI