Mumbai: The market witnessed scrip-specific activity and ended in positive territory for the third consecutive session in extremely narrow movements at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Sep 1, 2004) on fresh buying support from investors.

Mid-cap shares from cash group, however, remained in the limelight following new provisions in the budget in which the short-term capital gains tax has been reduced to 10 per cent and the long-term capital gains tax is eliminated.

In restricted activity, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened on a promising note at 5202.16 and later fluctuated in a range of 5222.81 and 5202.02 before ending at 5210.85 as against yesterday's (Aug 31, 2004) close of 5192.08, a net rise of 18.77 points or 0.36 per cent.

The market has become operator-driven with domestic players engaged in making fairly heavy commitments in mid-cap shares as well as selective purchases in blue chips even as local mutual funds turned net buyers in the past few sessions.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which generally were busy churning their portfolios, also reported net inflow of Rs 2795 crore in August, brokers said.

Key stocks including SBI, BHEL, GACL, Grasim, HPCL, MUL, Tata Motors, Hero Honda, ACC and Ranbaxy recorded handsome gains on fresh buying support.

However, Tata Steel, Wipro, Zee Telefilms, REL, Bharti Tele-Venture and Dr Reddy's Lab showed moderate losses due to profit booking by investors.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index moved up further by 10.37 points to 2799.44 from previous close of 2789.07.