Thursday, March 24 2005 11:25 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex today (Mar 24, 2005) showed signs of recovery with a smart price rally during morning trading after a sharp three-session slide on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on emergence buying support by operators and retail investors.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened on a promising note at 6456.02 as against yesterday's (Mar 23, 2005) close of 6454.46 and later moved upwards to a high of 6514.73 before being quoted at 6512.18 at 10:30 hrs (IST), up by 57.72 points.

The Sensex had fallen by 245.88 points in the past three trading sessions in reaction to rising crude oil prices and slowdown in Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) inflows coupled with a 0.25 percentage point hike in US interest rates with hints by the Federal Reserve of further rate hikes to contain inflationary trend.

World oil prices yesterday fell below $ 55 a barrel level while FIIs reported net sales of Rs 42.50 crore on Tuesday (Mar 22, 2005).

Crediting buying support by operators to the last day of week, brokers said operators seemed to be covering their short positions in select counters in view of a public holiday on March 25 for "Good Friday".

The market is expected remain steady for sometime before any fresh bull run, brokers added.

Key blue chip counters like RIL, Tata Steel, SBI, Maruti Udyog, ITC, HPCL, HLL, Grasim, GACL, Tata Motors, Wipro and Satyam Computers were quoted remarkably up on fresh buying support from investors.

However, ONGC, Hero Honda, HDFC Bank and Bajaj Auto showed moderate losses on fresh selling pressure.