Mumbai: The market snapped four-session winning streak and ended moderately down by eight points in narrow movements on the Stock Exchange in Mumbai today (Oct 5, 2004) due to late selling pressure from domestic financial institutions.

Banking and Public sector refinery stocks, however, stole the limelight on fairly heavy buying support during the second half of the session.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened lower at 5760.10 and later fluctuated in a range of 5786.54 and 5741.70 on alternate bouts of buying and selling before ending the day at 5758.67 as against yesterday's close of 5766.30, a net fall of 7.63 points or 0.13 per cent.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which reported net investments of Rs 242.80 crore on Monday, were believed to be heavy buyers in banking sector and a few blue chip counters after the midsession.

FIIs also had reported heavy net purchases of Rs 935 crore during last week.

The market is largely driven by increased FII activity but the higher levels attracted profit booking from domestic mutual funds, which pressed sales in the last thirty minutes of the session, brokers said.

Key counters including SBI, ICICI Bank, HPCL, Corporation Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Chennai Petro, SCI, Kochi Refinery Canara Bank, Andhra Bank and Syndicate Bank scored handsome gains on fresh buying support.

However, heavyweights like RIL, Tata Steel, L&T, ITC, HLL Grasim, HDFC, Hindalco, Hero Honda, Infosys tech, Bajaj Auto Dr Reddy's Lab and Satyam Computers showed moderate losses.