Thursday, February 2 2006 17:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex today (Feb 2,2006) beat a hasty retreat after an early upsurge and ended 15 points down, extending its losses to the second straight day on late sell-off triggered by a leading foreign fund's downgrade on India, even as select institutional investors absorbed part of the sales.

Starting on a firm footing at 9,890.90, the BSE's 30-share Index (Sensex) later spurted to the intra-day high of 9,956.10 on the back of fairly heavy FII inflows of Rs 217.40 crore on January 31.

In volatile trade, the Sensex, however, later turned weak and fell sharply to a low of 9,816.01 before ending the day at 9,843.87 against yesterday's close of 9,859.26, a net fall of 15.39 points or 0.16 per cent.

Attributing the negative reaction to a prominent US-based fund downgrading India, brokers said the market reacted negatively to the dramatic development despite some selective purchases by FIIs.

Operators and domestic funds too were believed to be sellers after the midsession. Heavyweight counters like Infosys Technologies, ICICI Bank, ONGC, HDFC, Larsen and Turbo (L&T), Maruti Udyog, State Bank of India (SBI) and TCS Ltd suffered a sharp setback due to selling pressure.

However, HLL, Bharti Tele-Venture, ACC, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited(BHEL), Hindalco, Tata Steel, Wipro, Cipla and RIL were prominent gainers on good buying interest from investors.