Mumbai: The market opened steady and later turned volatile, moving in a range of about 25 points, during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange today (Dec 17, 2004) on alternate bouts of buying and selling.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share index opened at 6420.90 as against yesterday's (Dec 16, 2004) close of 6420.38 and later fluctuated between 6434.04 and 6408.00 before being quoted at 6413.39 at 10.30 hrs (IST).

Domestic investors were seen booking profits at higher price levels at the weekend despite heavy FII inflows.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) reported net investments of Rs 406.60 crore on Wednesday. Domestic mutual funds too have turned net buyers for the last couple of days and made net purchases of Rs 193.63 crore on December 14 and 15.

Software stocks including Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computers and Wipro met with selling pressure due to weak trend on the Nasdaq. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed down by 16.40 points yesterday.

Among the blue-chips SBI, BHEL, Tata Steel, Grasim, ONGC, HPCL, Hindalco, Hero Honda, HDFC Bank, GACL and Dr Reddy's were quoted remarkably higher on fresh buying support.

However, RIL, Bharti Tele-Ventures, Tata Motors, ITC, L&T, ICICI Bank and HDFC showed marked falls due to profit booking.