Wednesday, August 24 2005 11:33 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) continued its slide for the fifth consecutive day, showing a moderate fall of 15 points during morning trading on the Stock Exchange, Mumbai (BSE) here today(August 24, 2005) on fresh selling pressure from investors.

The sensex opened steady at 7615.68 against yesterday's close of 7615.99 and later dropped to a low of 7570.44 before being quoted at 7600.63 at 10.30 am, a loss of 15.36 points.

The sentiment was adversely affected by a slowdown in FIIs' activity in the last few trading sessions.

Operators seemed to be squaring up positions in the Futures and Options (F&O) ahead of expiry of August contract on Thursday. A section of brokers, however, expected some buying support to emerge in the latter part of trading.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) reported meagre net investments of Rs 9.40 crore on August 22, the opening day of the week.

Key stocks like Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, Maruti Udyog, ITC, Infosys Tech, indalco, HDFC Bank, Hero Honda and Bajaj Auto were quoted substantially lower due to selling pressure.

However, select blue chip counters like Satyam Computers, RIL, SBI ONGC, Dr Reddy's Lab, BHEL, Bharti Tele-Venture and ACC showed moderate gains on some buying support.