Shrugging off caution over the outcome of Assembly election results, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs/FIIs) continued their buying spree on Indian stock markets. On Wednesday, they bought equities worth Rs 7,540 crore and after selling stocks worth Rs 3,968 crore, their net buy position was Rs 3,573 crore.
But caution did prevail among domestic institutional investors (DIIs), who were net sellers of Indian equities worth Rs 1,735 crore.
Wednesday was the fourth consecutive day when FPIs ended up as net buyers of Indian stocks, according to data released by the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
It also marked a significant increase in their daily net-buy positions since January this year. It was on February 17 that FPIs were net buyers of stock worth Rs 8,043 crore. On other days, their maximum, daily net-buy position has been in the range of 400-800 crore.
There are about 7,500 registered FPIs in India, according to the National Securities Depository Ltd.
The BSE Sensex closed 98 points lower at 28,902 while the NSE Nifty ended 23 points down at 8,924. Top Sensex losers were Tata Steel (1.89 percent), ONGC (1.78 percent), M&M (1.30 percent) and Infosys (1.22 percent).
The fall was attributed to profit-booking in some counters, apart from two significant forthcoming events — the Assembly election results to be declared on Saturday (March 11) and the upcoming US Federal Reserve's policy-setting meeting on March 14-15.
Music Broadcast Ltd. (also Radio City), whose IPO closed today, saw huge interest among retail investors, who subscribed more than three times by the second day. As against 52.51 lakh shares reserved under the category, the subscriptions stood at 192.30 lakh shares, or 3.66 percent.
Data available with stock exchanges showed that the public issue had been oversubscribed nine times by 2 pm.
Gold prices closed Rs 50 lower at Rs 29,500 per 10 gm while silver ended at Rs 42,100 per kg, down Rs 400.
