Wednesday, March 23 2005 17:20 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Despite a stellar performance by top heavyweight Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), stocks today (Mar 23, 2005) suffered another sharp setback pulling the Sensex down by 81 points on sustained sell-off by investors even as select key counters attracted buying enquiries.

RIL witnessed brisk activity and fluctuated widely before ending with a marked rise of Rs 8.70 on speculations that the long-drawn ownership rift between Ambani brothers has more or less been resolved, brokers said.

After a firm start at 6533.65, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index later moved in a range of 6568.20 and 6434.81 before ending at 6454.46 as against yesterday's close of 6535.45, a net fall of 80.99 points or 1.24 per cent.

Despite a substantial fall in global prices which were quoted above $ 55 a barrel in Asian trade this morning, operators and retailers seemed to be in no mood to make fresh commitments because of the fiscal year end considerations.

The slowdown in FIIs inflows and hints by the Federal Reserve of further rate hikes to contain inflationary trend had a sentimental impact on the market.

The Fed raised the US interest rates by 0.25 percentage point to 2.75 per cent late Tuesday.

Investors fear that FII activity could slow down further if global interest rates continued to head upwards following the Fed rate hike. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) reported meagre net investments of Rs 43.80 crore on Monday.

SBI, ONGC, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Zee Telefilms, Grasim Bajaj Auto, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Maruti Udyog, Wipro, HPCL, ICICI Bank, Infosys Tech, Tata Power and Satyam Computer showed sharp falls.