Mumbai: Riding piggyback on a sharp rally in front-line new economy counters, the SENSEX attempted a remarkable recovery at early stages only to end flat at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in Mumbai on April 15.

Led by Infosys Technologies, which was at the receiving end during last week after the company announced poor outlook for the fiscal 2003-04, Satyam Computers, Zee Telefilms and some of the second-line stocks bounced back with a vengeance on fairly heavy buying at the prevailing lower levels.

However, higher levels attracted profit selling and few of them reacted downwards at the close.

Reflecting sharp advances in heavyweights like Infosys Tech, Satyam Computer and few others, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened remarkably up at 3010.96 and even rose to the intra-day high at 3018.66.

Later, it fell back due to selling by domestic funds in old economy shares like RIL, SBI, Tisco, Telco, HPCL, Hero Honda, ITC and ACC to end at hardly changed at 2997.38 from last Friday's close of 2997.87, a modest fall of 0.49 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index, however, rose by 4.73 points to 1487.11 from previous close of 1482.38.

Attributing an impressive rebound in IT stocks to fairly heavy purchases by hedge funds that had hammered down these shares during last week, brokers said the SENSEX would have been placed on a strong ground, had blue-chip old economy stocks not come under pressure and dipped substantially.

Brokers had been anticipating profit booking at a price level of Rs 3000 in Infosys Tech that ended sharply higher.

PTI