Mumbai: The sensex opened on a promising note and later witnessed extremely narrow movements during the morning trading on the Stock Exchange today (Feb 17, 2004) even as select stocks attracted fairly good buying support.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share index opened moderately higher at 6018.95 as against yesterday's (Feb 16, 2004) close of 6012.35 and later moved in a range between 6027.03 and 5999.13 before being quoted at 6022.31 at 10.30 hrs (IST).

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which are the principal driving force behind the market, once again have slowed down activity and reported net investments of Rs 51 crore on February 13.

Operators and retailers too have turned cautious and seemed to have wait-and-watch policy ahead of key public issues in the next couple of months in the primary market.

Key counters like Cipla, Grasim, ICICI Bank, SBI, Infosys Tech, ITC, L&T, MTNL and Tata Motor were quoted remarkably higher on fresh buying support.

However, Bharti Televentures, HDFC Bank, HPCL and Tisco showed marked falls.