Mumbai: The sensex opened on a promising note and later met with strong resistance in line with a negative reaction in stocks during morning trading on the Stock Exchange today (Feb 19, 2004) on fresh profit booking.

After opening better at 6041.36 as against yesterday's (Feb 18, 2004) close of 6035.80, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index later fell back substantially to a low at 5997.46 before being quoted at 6001.50 at 10.45 hours (IST).

Operators and retailers were believed to be booking profits in a bid to reinvest through forthcoming key public issues, brokers said major companies like ONGC, GAIL, CMC, IPCL, IBP and Dredging Corp are making a public offer in the next couple of months.

Meanwhile, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) have slowed down activity and made a net purchases of a meagre Rs 66 crore on February 16.

ONGC, CMC, Dredging Corp, IPCL, Gail, Bharti Televentures, RIL and a few others were quoted remarkably up on continued buying support.

However, Infosys Tech, Satyam Computers, BSES, Grasim, GACL, ICICI Bank, Ranbaxy Lab and Wipro recorded marked falls.