Mumbai: Stocks suffered a moderate setback and the Sensex ended down by 15 points in volatile activity at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Sep 20, 2004) on buying support alternated by selling pressure from domestic mutual funds and operators.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index, which attempted a rally at early stages, rising to the day's high of 5585.57, later turned weak and dropped to the intra-day low of 5535.57 before ending the day at 5545.82 as against last Friday's close of 5561.15, a net fall of 15.33 points or 0.28 per cent.

Operators and domestic financial institutions reportedly were heavy sellers, particularly in the last thirty minutes of the session, and seemed to have booked profits in several blue chip counters at the prevailing higher price levels.

Meanwhile, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) remained net buyers and absorbed major chunk of sales made by domestic players, brokers said.

Attributing the volatility to alternate bouts of buying and selling during second half of the session, brokers said had it not been for sustained investments from FIIs, which helped contain the negative impact of heavy sell-off, the market would have registered a sharp fall.

Blue chip counters including RIL, SBI, Satyam Computers, Wipro, Infosys Tech, MTNL, Grasim, Maruti Udyog, Zee Telefilms and Dr Reddy's Lab recorded marked falls on profit selling.

While Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Power, Hindalco, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, ITC, Cipla, HPCL, ONGC and BHEL finished with handsome gains.