Mumbai: The Sensex cut short the seven-week long weekly gaining streak and plunged by 2.83 per cent to below 6,000-mark in extremely volatile market in the week under review on across-the-board sell-off by foreign funds as well as retailers.

The BSE barometer, however, had touched the new historic closing high at 6,194.11 on Wednesday (Jan 14, 2004) before the surprising week-end batterings pulled it sharply down to the intra-week low at 5,914.02 and to end the week at 5,946.19 as against last weekend's close of 6,119.59, a net fall of 173.40 points.

Despite a slew of measures taken by the Government to attract foreign investments as well as strong corporate and economic fundamentals, the market witnessed a dramatic slow down in Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) activity during the week.

After the sweeping tax cuts last week, the government liberalised foreign direct investment (FDI) norms for banking and petroleum sectors, and in scientific and technical journals on January 15.

The sharp negative reaction in bourses during the last two sessions was, however, attributed to the Government's deferment of a decision to hike the FDI limits in the telecom sector as also to its plans to impose restrictions on the use of participatory notes as a route of investments.

The principal driving force FIIs turned heavy sellers at the fag end forcing operators and retailers to fall in line.

FIIs net investments in the first four sessions of the week amounted to a meagre Rs 95 crore compared to last week's net purchases of Rs 1,072 crore.

Bull operators too were cautious and largely confined to switchover activity in a bid to reduce their exposure to 50 per cent ahead of January 14. The deadline fixed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) while revising the current margin trading norms on January 8.

The sudden withdrawal by foreign funds would have adverse impact on the market, even as investors were confident about encouraging corporate performance. Some blue-chip companies will announce Q3 quarter results during next couple of weeks.

The broad-based BSE-100 index dived by 155.37 points to end the week at 3,131.86 from last weekend's close of 3,287.23.