Mumbai: After a promising start, equities suffered a marked setback, pushing the Sensex down by over 16 points at close in erratic movements on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Nov 24) due to selling pressure from operators.

However, select index-based counters like Tata Motors, Tisco, Dr Reddy's Lab, HPCL, L&T and Ranbaxy Lab scored smart gains mitigating the Sensex's downslide.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately higher at 4852.12 and later fluctuated irregularly in a range between 4858.43 and 4803.80 before ending at 4822.15 as against last Friday's Nov 21) close of 4838.54, a net loss of 16.39 points or 0.34 per cent.

However, the broad-based BSE-100 Index edged up to 2484.77 from previous close of 2483.48.

Though operators were optimistic about the future trend on the back of net investments by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) in the concluding sessions of last week, speculators preferred to square up positions ahead of expiry of November contract in Futures and Options on Thursday (Nov 27), market sources said.

Net purchases of Rs 138 crore by FIIs on Thursday after a slowdown for a few days, injected confidence among investors that FIIs would not withdraw large amount of funds from Indian markets, as anticipated earlier.

The market was well supported by net purchases by local funds during last week.

Heavyweights like HLL, Infosys Tech, RIL, BHEL, GACL, ITC and SBI recorded sharp falls on selling pressure.

PTI