Friday, June 24 2005 12:58 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex started weak and declined further sharply by 43 points during the early trading on the Stock Exchange, Mumbai (BSE) today (Jun 24, 2005) on increased selling pressure at prevailing level.

The BSE benchmark 30-share sensitive index opened weak at 7104.43 as against yesterday's (Jun 23, 2005) close of 7119.76 and continued to lean down due to increased offering and touched a low of 7058.01.

Later, on revival of buying in select counters, the index recovered and was quoted at 7076.88 at 10.30hrs (IST), showing a loss of 42.88 points over the previous close.

Heavy selling by domestic funds and slowing down activity by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) caused the sharp fall in shares, especially in the IT sector.

According to market analysts, the correction would continue for some more days as the Sensex had risen steeply since Monday (Jun 20, 2005) following the Reliance settlement on last Saturday (Jun 18, 2005).

Steep fall in Wall Street stocks where the Dow Jones industrial average fell sharply by 166.49 points to 10421.44 and the Nasdaq Composite Index declined by 21.37 points to 2070.66, also dampened the market sentiment to a large extent, a broker said.

The major losers during the early trading were Infosys Teck, Satyam Computer, RIL, L&T, ITC, IPCL, Grasim, HDFC, Hero Honda, BPCL, Bajaj Auto, Maruti, M&M, Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Steel, ACC, Wipro and Zee Tele.

On the other hand, REL, Reliance Capital, HLL, Ranbaxy BHEL, HDFC Bank, MTNL, ONGC and Tata Chem were better on some support.