Tuesday, May 17 2005 16:52 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The stock market today (May 17, 2005) beat a hasty retreat pulling the Sensex down by 62 points after a brief overnight price rally as operators resorted to unloading of long positions despite consistent purchases by mutual funds.

Rising to the intra-day high of 6568.61 at early stages of the trading, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index later turned weak and dropped to the day's low 6449.98 before ending the day at 6466.00 as against yesterday's close of 6528.03, a net fall of 62.03 points or 0.95 per cent.

The sentiment was adversely affected by reports that high global crude prices and the Government's decision to disallow a retail price hike have hit profitability of oil companies.

Operators and retailers, which had created long positions in derivative segment yesterday, hammered down heavy weighted counters in the light of dismal performance by oil majors like IOC, HPCL, BPCL and IBP in April '05, brokers said.

These companies reportedly have incurred losses of Rs 1,389 crore in April, against a profit of Rs 761 crore in the corresponding period last year.

Domestic financial institutions, however, seemed to be continued buyers, albeit selectively, in key stocks, brokers added. Local funds reported a hefty net investments of Rs 286.35 crore on May 13, taking the total net purchases to over Rs 948 crore during last week.

However, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) remained net sellers to the tune of Rs 44.60 crore last Friday.

RIL, SBI, Tata Steel, ONGC, Bajaj Auto, Maruti Udyog, ACC HPCL, Wipro and REL bore the brunt of selling pressure.