Friday, April 8 2005 11:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex today (Apr 8, 2005) opened on a weak note and later moved in an extremely narrow range in dull activity during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in the absence of any worthwhile buying support amid slowdown in Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) inflows.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened fractionally down at 6544.81 as against yesterday's (Apr 7, 2005) close of 6545.64 and later fluctuated in a small range of 6560.88 and 6525.28 before being quoted at 6532.37 at 10:30 hrs (IST), down by 16.75 points.

FIIs reported small net investments of Rs 95.10 crore on Wednesday (Apr 6, 2005).

Operators seemed to be cautious in view of reduced flow of investments from foreign funds and concerned about the high global oil prices, which are expected to have adverse impact on the economic growth.

Oil prices fell by nearly $ 2 a barrel yesterday to below $ 55 a barrel but still considered to be high even as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned the oil prices would stay high following rising living standards in the developing world.

Blue chip counters including Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computers, Wipro, RIL, Grasim, BHEL, Tata Motors and a few others were quoted substantially lower on selling pressure.

However, Tata Steel, Maruti Udyog, ICICI Bank, HPCL, HDFC Cipla, Bharti Tele-Venture and Bajaj Auto showed marked gains on some weekend buying.