Mumbai: Late profit taking by operators and domestic financial institutions pared early gains and majority of blue-chip stocks even ended with substantial losses pushing the SENSEX in negative territory on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on December 16 despite selective purchases by foreign funds.

Speculators as also local funds led by Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) reportedly were heavy sellers at the day's higher price levels after the Oil PSU HPCL led a selective rally during the initial period of the session.

Attributing early sharp rally in HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited) to hopes about a likely meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Disinvestment (CCD) shortly, brokers said investors have turned optimistic after BJP's landslide victory in Gujarat Assembly elections, feeling that the government would speed up privatisation programme.

Initially, bank shares like ICICI Bank and SBI, which have fairly good weightage in the SENSEX, too witnessed hectic buying interest from operators.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index which opened on a strong footing at 3360.20 and rose to the intra-day high at 3371.16, later met with resistance and dropped sharply to end at 3328.39 as against last Friday's close of 3342.97, netting a fall of 14.58 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index dipped by 9.87 points to 1637.60 from previous close of 1647.47.

Infosys Technologies, MTNL, Grasim Ind, RIL, Telco, Zee Telefilms, Tisco, Satyam Computers and HCL Technologies showed marked falls on selling pressure.

However, PSU (Public Sector Undertaking) stocks like HPCL, Dredging Corp, Bharat Earth, GSFC, IOC scored impressive gains.

PTI