Mumbai: Old economy stocks continued their slide with the Sensex ending lower by 41 points for the second consecutive session in narrow movements at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Oct 13, 2004) on sustained selling pressure from retail investors and operators.

Select software counters, however scored handsome gains on fairly good buying support prompted by announcement by IT bellwether Infosys Technologies of better-than-expected second quarter results this morning.

In response to excellent performance by Infosys, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened firm at 5750.36 and even rose further to the intra-day high of 5762.60 at early stages.

But, late sell-off by investors pulled the Sensex down to the day's low of 5663.79 before ending the day at 5676.73 as against yesterday's (Oct 12, 2004) close of 5717.54, a net fall of 40.81 points or 0.71 per cent.

Infosys Technologies reported a net profit of Rs 447.37 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2004, up by 48.64 per cent over Rs 300.98 crore in the corresponding period last year.

Brokers attributed late negative reaction in stocks to a sudden slow down in FII activity as well as worries over prevailing high prices of global crude that might force the Government to hike prices of petrol and diesel.

Auto and Oil stocks in particular, bore the brunt of selling triggered by news that the Government will this week review petrol and diesel prices, as a result, the BSE Auto Index dropped by 39.81 points to 2336.42 and the BSE OILGAS Index by 63.75 points to 2925.07.