Mumbai: The Sensex lost its early gains and even ended 13 points lower in extremely low volume on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (April 30, 2004) due to fairly heavy selling pressure from operators at the fag end.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Sensex which had risen to the intra-day high at 5710.45, later met with a strong resistance and dropped sharply to end at 5655.09 as against yesterday's close of 5668.43, a net fall of 13.34 points or 0.24 per cent.

Initially, the market had shown signs of recovery after a massive battering in the last three sessions, following fairly good purchases by Indian financial institutions.

However, the market failed to maintain higher levels and dramatically fell back during the last one hour as a result of selling pressure in the form of squaring up of positions by operators at the weekend.

Operators seemed to be unwilling to carry forward their positions in the light of long weekend and a slowdown in FII activity in the current week.

Though the initial upsurge was attributed to the market leader RIL's announcement of excellent performance in the last fiscal, investors preferred to maintain low profile in view of lack of worthwhile institutional support.

Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors, Zee Telefilms, RIL, Tata Power, Tisco, REL, ICICI Bank, HLL, HDFC Bank and HDFC registered marked falls on selling pressure.

However, ACC, BHEL, Cipla, HPCL, Infosys Tech, ITC, L&T, MTNL, SBI and Wipro showed moderate gains on buying support.