Share Market Updates

The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex Thursday fell by 288 points on heavy selling by funds mainly in metal and capital goods stocks.

The Sensex, which zoomed to record an intra-day high of 21,206 points, fell back sharply to close at 20,582.08, a hefty fall of 287.70. The key-index also touched the day’s low of 20,530.07 points.

Similarly, the second wide-based National Stock Exchange’s Nifty fell by 115.05 points at 6,156.95, after touching the day’s low of 6,142.90 and a high of 6,347 points.
Major pullers to the Sensex were metal index that fell by loosing 653.58 at 18,770.14 and capital goods index by 409.28 points at 19,666.06. PSU index also lost 337.34 points at 10,381.09.

Realty index dropped by 296.66 points at 13,270.05, oil and gas index by 288.20 points at 13,528.94, consumer durable index by 248.21 points at 6,347.79, healthcare index by 119.73 points at 4,153.32 and power index by 117.80 points at 4,700.63.
A steep fall of 511.32 points in smallcap index to 12,858.63 and of 329.54 points in midcap index to 9,440.45 were the trigger behind the selling.

* GSM service providers added 5.72 million subscribers, increasing the total number of users to 171.8 million as on December 31, 2007. This is a 3.43% increase from the 166.1 million users that the operators had as on November 30, 2007.

* ICICI Bank will list at least four of its subsidiaries, starting with its brokerage arm ICICI Securities, and the process would commence within six months, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer K V Kamath said.

* Ispat Industries has decided to offload around 25% stake in its wholly-owned subsidiary Ispat Energy, to private equity (PE) funds to raise around Rs 800 crore.