Tuesday, August 23 2005 12:28 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) today (Aug 23, 2005) held steady during morning trading after a promising start even as operators preferred to square up positions ahead of the expiry of derivatives contract amid a slowdown in Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) activity.

The sensex opened moderately higher at 7764.86 as against yesterday's (Aug 23, 2005) close of 7750.60 and later fluctuated in a range of 7770.83 and 7718.47 before being quoted at 7758.46 at 10.30 am, up by 7.86 points.

Operators reportedly were squaring up their positions ahead of expiry of August contract in the Futures and Options segment on Thursday while the principal driving force Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) slowed down activity since last week, brokers said.

FIIs reported net sales of Rs 77.10 crore on August 19 after making relatively small net investments of Rs 203.50 crore a couple of days before. FIIs have pumped in about US dollar 7.4 billion (approx Rs 32,000 crore) in Indian equity in 2005 so far.

The market seemed to be cautious due to another likely hike in petrol and diesel prices. Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said that there is no alternative but to raise the prices of petroleum products in line with the spiraling crude oil prices.

Key stocks like Reliance Industris Ltd. (RIL), State Bank of India (SBI), Wipro, Tata Steel, ITC, Larsen and Toubro (L&T), Infosys Tech, HDFC, Bharti Tele-Venture and Bajaj Auto were quoted moderately higher on fresh buying support.

However, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL), Cipla, Grasim, ICICI Bank, ONGC and Ranbaxy showed minor losses due to selling pressure.