Mumbai: The firm trend of July 14 was short lived on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on July 15 as prices, particularly from the IT segment, suffered a sharp setback due to emergence of heavy selling by operators and foreign funds, pulling down the SENSEX by 34.41 points to close at 3,686.34.

Software stocks bore the brunt of large scale offloading on the back of dismal performance by Mastek in the fourth quarter as the company's net profit crashed by 85.29 per cent over the corresponding period last year.

Marked fall in index-based old-economy shares like ITC, BHEL, BSES, HDFC, HPCL, RIL, HLL and Telco also contributed to the SENSEX decline.

Initial rally in other sectors like banking, steel and cement also fizzled out due to fresh profit booking by operators but some of them managed to end better.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened slightly lower at 3,719.17 as against July 14 close of 3,720.75 and immediately touched a high of 3,733.88. Later, it met with strong resistance at higher levels and dipped to a low of 3,657.18 before concluding at 3,686.34, a fall of 0.92 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also dropped by 17.02 points to 1,853.49 from previous close of 1,870.51.

Meanwhile, the market discounted the rally on the Wall Street where the Dow Jones industrial average and the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index had firmed up further.

Mirroring the decline in IT counters, the sectorial BSE-IT index tumbled by 37.36 points to close at 1,160.18.

PTI