Wednesday, May 11 2005 18:02 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex today (May 11, 2005) recovered most of the early losses but failed to land in positive terrain and eased moderately by 9.58 points to close at 6445.13 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on increased selling following weak global advices.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened sharply lower at 6420.25 as against yesterday's close of 6454.71 and dropped to the day's low of 6380.76. Later, on revival of buying it rose smartly to conclude at 6445.13, a small fall of 0.15 per cent.

Negative overseas advices dampened the market sentiment to a large extent. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index dipped by 103.23 points and 16.90 points respectively last night.

East Asian markets also showed weak trend at close today. The Hang Seng was down by 78.58 points, the Nikkei by 38.76 points, Taiwan by 32.67 points and Kospi by 10.90.

Operators continued to book profit at prevailing levels and sold heavily in blue chip counters, while local mutual funds and Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) gave support at lower levels towards the fag end, leading to smart recovery in select share values, dealers said.

Some of the bank and metal shares met with heavy profit selling and finished with marked to moderate losses, pushing down the Bankex and BSE-Metal index by 23.79 points and 37.76 points to 3713.27 and 5638.89 respectively.

The fall in the Sensex was cushioned by a smart rally in some index-based counters like Bajaj Auto, BHEL, Hero Honda, ITC, Maruti, Hindalco and HPCL.