Mumbai: Shares failed to maintain their initial firmness on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Feb 16, 2004) as select heavyweight met with selling by local funds towards the fag-end, however the Sensex managed to close just in the positive terrain at 6,012.35.

Sharp to moderate rise in index-based counters like BHEL, ITC, L&T, BSES, Tata Motors, Tisco, Bharti Tele, Zee Tele, Hero Honda and HDFC Bank helped the index to end better, brokers said.

Had there not been a fall in HLL, RIL, HPCL, GDFC, ONGC Grasim, Infosys Tech, Bajaj Auto, Dr Reddy, and Wipro the Sensex would have shown remarkable gains.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened on a promising note at 6,025.85 as against last Friday's (Feb 13, 2004) close of 6,011.66 and touched a high of 6,063.91. Later, profit booking at higher levels pulled down the Sensex to a low of 6,001.57 before concluding at 6,012.35, a minor rise of 0.69 point.

However, the broad-based BSE-100 index closed down by 6.07 points at 3,105.34 as against previous close of 3,111.41.

Elsewhere, car makers Maruti Udyog Ltd and Tata Motors continued to be in the limelight on sustained buying by foreign funds as well as operators, while select pharma shares, particularly mid-caps, also remained in keen demand on institutional buying support.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), who reportedly purchased shares worth Rs 927 crore on the first four days of the last week, were buyers in select blue-chip stocks while local funds booked profits in some of the index-based shares.