Mumbai: Stocks reacted negatively in the last 30 minutes and gave up part of early gains after a sharp mid-session rally at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Mar 23, 2004) due to late sell-off by domestic mutual funds.

The Sensex, however, recovered part of overnight losses on the back of smart rises in select blue-chip counters.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately lower at 5356.97 and later witnessed narrowly mixed trend moving in a small range of 35 points till the mid-session.

Thereafter, the BSE barometer rallied sharply to the intra-day high at 5450.38 before ending at 5400.99 as against yesterday's close of 5365.40, a net gain of 35.59 points or 0.66 per cent.

Operators and retailers which generally had adopted wait and watch policy in the light of the general elections to be held in the next two months, were believed to have covered short positions ahead of the expiry of March contract in derivatives on Thursday.

FIIs, which were net buyers to the tune of Rs 717 crore during last week, reportedly made purchases in select key counters at the prevailing lower price levels.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index edged up by 3.85 points to 2835.17 from previous close of 2831.32.

Heavy-weighted counters like RIL, Satyam Computers, Zee Tele, L&T, Infosys Tech, HPCL, Hindalco, HLL, HDFC, Grasim, GACL, BHEL, Bharti Tele and Bajaj Auto recorded marked gains.

However, ICICI Bank, MTNL, Tisco and Tata Motors showed moderate losses on selling pressure.