Friday, October 21 2005 11:56 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) today (Oct 21, 2005) witnessed high volatility during early trade on alternate bouts of buying and selling in the light of heavy Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) withdrawals amid indications of more interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

The Sensex opened moderately lower at 7930.03 as against yesterday's (Oct 20, 2005) close of 7935.12 and later fluctuated erratically in a range of 7991.92 and 7901.14 before being quoted at 7957.46 at 10.30 am, up by 22.34 points over last close.

The market has become unpredictable with no signs of stability at the resistance level of 7850-7950 in view of sustained selling by hedge funds, brokers said.

Partly attributing FII pull out to the rupee's weakness against dollar, brokers said as anticipated, the market has failed to respond positively to excellent second quarter earnings by some major corporates.

Operators and traders were seen booking profits at higher levels at the weekend while domestic mutual funds showed keen interest at the lower levels. Mutual funds made net purchases of over Rs 550 crore in the first two days of the week.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down by 133.03 points and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 23.13 points yesterday.