Mumbai: The market snapped the four-session winning streak and today (Dec 17, 2004) fell back sharply by 74 points at close despite continued FII inflows, albeit selective and a 0.28 per cent fall in inflation number.

The negative price reaction at the weekend was attributed to heavy profit booking by operators and traders.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened steady at 6420.90 and gradually moved downwards in volatile activity to the intra-day low of 6329.71 before ending the day at 6346.48 as against yesterday's (Dec 16, 2004) close of 6420.38, a net loss of 73.90 points or 1.15 per cent.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which reported heavy net investments of Rs 406.60 crore on Wednesday (Dec 15, 2004), were believed to be buyers in select key counters.

The market failed to have any positive impact of a fall in inflation rate, which stood at 7.02 per cent for the week ended December 4, 2004.

Domestic Mutual Funds too were sellers after making good purchases of Rs 193.63 crore on December 14 and 15.

Operators and day traders were heavy sellers in several counters to book profits at the higher weekend price levels.

IT sector suffered a marked setback following a weak trend on the NASDAQ. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed down by 16.40 points yesterday.

However, second-line pharma stocks attracted fairly heavy value buying. NIC Piramal, Glaxo, Aventis Pharma, E Merck, Cadila Health, Pfizer, Abbott and Torrent Pharma scored impressive gains.