Mumbai: A smart rally in heavyweight RIL (Reliance Industries Limited) and few other scrips helped the SENSEX to minimise early losses in an otherwise dull activity on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on September 23 on selective buying by operators and retail investors.

Other index-based shares like HLL, Grasim, GACL, HPCL, MTNL, Telco, Tisco, Infosys Tech, Satyam Computer and HCL Technologies, however, dropped moderately on institutional selling, which caused the SENSEX to close in negative terrain.

Petro-chem giant and heavyweight, RIL, attracted some buying in the last session and aided the SENSEX to mitigate early losses.

In line with two-way movements on alternate bouts of buying and selling, the BSE Sensitive Index which opened on a promising note at 3030.65, later fluctuated narrowly in a range between 3035.93 and 3008.50 and closed at 3021.28 as against last Friday's close of 3024.35, a loss of 3.07 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index also eased by 3.06 points to 1488.97 from previous close of 1492.03.

Brokers said the market has become operator-driven with both domestic financial institutions and foreign funds keeping low profile having focused their attention on select second-rung stocks.

Traders were reportedly showing interest only in those stocks, which provide good investment opportunity, they added.

Majority of software counters, which were steady to firm at early stages, took a beating at the fag end on selling by speculators.

PTI