Mumbai: The market snapped eight-session long winning streak and ended marginally lower as equities gave up early gains and a few blue chips even registered falls on later profit taking by domestic financial institutions as well as operators and retail investors.

After rising to the intra-day high of 5456.85, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index experienced strong resistance and fell back to end the day (Sep 15, 2004) at 5420.09 as against yesterday's close of 5428.77, a net loss of 8.68 points or 0.16 per cent.

However, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) which reported net purchases of over Rs 1000 crore in ten sessions till September 13, made fairly good purchases in select blue chip counters including BHEL, HDFC Bank, ONGC, Bajaj Auto, Zee Telefilms, HLL and a few others.

The market had already discounted concerns over higher domestic inflation rate and strong trend in international crude oil prices.

Attributing selling pressure by domestic players to the prevailing higher price levels, brokers said a leading US-based fund was believed to have absorbed major chunk of the sales made by local mutual funds.

Satyam Computer, Tata Motors, Ranbaxy, Wipro, HPCL, Hero Honda and Tata Power witnessed profit booking at higher price levels and finished with moderate falls.

Zee Telefilms turned strong on the company's decision not to bid afresh for the four-year telecast rights to cricket matches in India.