Mumbai: After a promising start, equities gave up part of early gains and select counters even showed moderate losses pushing the SENSEX in negative territory in lacklustre activity on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on October 21 on profit booking by investors.

Depicting losses in key index-based stocks, the BSE benchmark 30-share index which rose to the intra-day high at 3,018.99, later fell back to end below 3,000-level at 2,998.01 as against a close of 3,009.76 on October 18, netting a fall of 11.75 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index eased by 6.52 points to 1,486.22 from previous close of 1,492.74.

The Unit Trust of India (UTI) was believed to be seller in some heavyweight counters after the mid-session.

Speculators too booked profits in Infosys Technologies, MTNL, Grasim Ind, Dr Reddy's Lab, Bajaj Auto, HCL Technologies, ITC and few others.

The market discounted firm trend on Wall Street, which finished its second consecutive week in positive territory last weekend as investors cheered some better- than-expected earnings reports.

Market sources said that operators preferred to book profits at any given opportunity rather than making fresh commitments in the light of absence of any indication of worthwhile purchases by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) which had also been cautious for a fairly long period.

PTI