Mumbai: Global bearishness on concerns over soaring crude oil prices weighed heavily on the Sensex as it dropped by 25.56 points to close at 5169.07 on the stock exchange here today (August 4, 2004) as operators preferred to book profits at higher level.

The benchmark New York September contract shot up to an all-time closing high of $ 44.24 per barrel on Tuesday (August 3, 2004) which depressed the market sentiments as dealers said the consistent rise in global crude oil prices could have a negative impact on economic growth.

Another dampening factor was weak trend in the overseas markets as on the Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (NSE) dipped by 58.92 points and 32.67 points respectively last night.

The South East-Asian markets also displayed a weak trend at the close today. The Nikkei was down by 130.5 points, the Hang Seng by 76.86 and the Singapore ST Index by 7.95 points. Fast Moving Consumer Giant (FMCG) and among the top heavyweights, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), suffered a sharp setback and touched multi-year low on heavy offloading by institutional investors, affecting the sensex negatively.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened low at 5189.88 as against yesterday's close of 5194.63 and immediately touched a high of 5201.56. Later, it met with strong resistance and dropped to a low of 5145.22 before concluding at 5169.07, a net fall of 0.49 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 index also declined by 10.63 points to 2756.37 from previous close of 2767.00.