Mumbai: The sensex opened barely steady and moved in a very narrow range in a listless opening session at the stock exchange today (Feb 13, 2004) following lack of buying support from institutional investors and operators.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened hardly changed at 5936.65 as against yesterday's (Feb 12, 2004) close of 5936.96 and was trapped in a limited breadth of 5944.87 and 5922.38 before being quoted at 5942.69 at 10.30 hrs (IST).

Most of the pharma shares, particularly second-line like Torrent Pharma, Abbott, Cadila Healthcare, Lupin, Ipca Lab and few others, were in limelight on good buying support from institutional investors.

Wockhardt and Alembic Ltd continued to be in keen demand following announcement of bonus shares by these companies yesterday.

Front-Line IT shares such as Infosys Tech and Wipro also attracted renewed buying.

From the index-based stocks, Bharti Tele, Grasim, ITC, Tata Power and Zee Telefilms were quoted marginally higher while ACC, BHEL, HDFC Bank, HLL, HPCL, ICICI Bank, L&T, ONGC and SBI showed modest falls on selling.

However, BOI, Jaiprakash Ind, Kotak Bank, BHEL, VSNL, Kochi Refinery and Gillett were quoted lower.