Mumbai: Late profit booking pared early gains in equities even as the SENSEX managed to close in the positive territory in lacklustre activity on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on February 21.

Speculators as well as domestic financial Institutions booked profits in technology stocks after early rally prompted by a strong turnaround on Wall Street that lifted the NASDAQ composite index and the Dow Jones industrial averages by about 25 points and 196 points on February 20.

Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computers, Zee Telefilms, HCL Techno and few other key scrips lost part or all of early gains due to cautious approach by the market operators.

After rising to the intra-day high at 3590.99, the BSE benchmark 30-share index later fluctuated in an extremely narrow range between 3590.99 and 3558.82 before ending at 3570.46 as against close of 3558.21 on February 20, netting a gain of 12.25 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index recovered by 5.78 points to close at 1727.25 from previous close of 1721.47.

Meanwhile, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which have been consistent net buyers since February 6 and made net purchases of Rs 282 crore in the first three sessions, seemed to have slowed activity, picking up small lots of shares.

Market sources, however, attributed late profit selling to fears of passing over some taxes to corporates or capital market following news that though direct tax collections were up by 0.26 per cent during April-January this fiscal, the government is far behind the annual target of Rs 85,275 crore.

PTI