Mumbai: Stocks made a strong turnaround at the fag end and recovered large part of early losses on the back of heavy purchases by institutional investors on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Feb 20, 2004).

After a fresh slide in blue-chip stocks due to sustained selling pressure from operators and retailers, fairly heavy net investments by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) during the last 15 minutes helped prices rebound with select index-based counters closing with moderate gains.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened marginally down at 5847.97 and generally moved downwards to the intra-day low at 5770.87 before bouncing back to end at 5850.72 as against yesterday's close of 5855.10, a net loss of 4.38 points.

Had it not been for sharp losses recorded by Bajaj Auto, HLL, Dr Reddy's Lab, HDFC, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Bharti Televenture, Infosys Tech and Zee Telefilms, the BSE barometer would have ended in positive territory.

FIIs which made net purchases of Rs 771 crore in the first three sessions and were believed to be all-round sellers yesterday, reportedly made heavy purchases at the fag end.

Brokers said operators, however, seemed to be continued sellers for the past few sessions and were keen in diverting investments to primary market.

Major companies like IPCL, CMC, GAIL, IBP, ONGC and Dredging Corp are coming out with discount public offers in the next couple of months.

IPCL public offer received overwhelming response with the issue getting bids for 3.92 crore shares against the equity offer of 5.94 crore shares till 16:30 hours (IST).