Friday, April 21 2006 18:34 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange key index, which moved up mount 12k in the previous trading session, today ( Apr 21, 2006) ended flat after moving to extremes in a range of 242 points, but was still bullish.

The 30-share sensex, which spurted to a peak of 12,102.00 in early trade as most index constituents continued their upper march, fell sharply to the day's low of 11,860.35 after IT services firm Satyam Computers came out with below-than- expected Q4 results and fiscal 2006-07 guidance.

However, the fall was arrested by domestic mutual funds, which absorbed major chunk of the sales that followed Satyam's results. The fall was also a result of profit booking by small investors at current higher levels.

The sensex rebound to end the day at 12,030.30, a marginal fall of 9.25 points over yesterday's close.

The index had gained by over 800 points in the last four days the biggest weekly climb in the last four yearson the back of very impressive results announced by Infosys, TCS Ltd, Wipro and brick and mortar blue chip Tata Steel and a few others.

Investors, however, viewed today's dip as a healthy correction to the overstreched market. Satyam Computers, RIL, Dr Reddy's Lab, SBI, NTPC, Wipro and Hindalco were major losers in the sensex family.

Incidentally, RIL touched the Rs 1,000 mark for the first time before it succumbed to heavy profit booking. RIL scrip breached the four digit mark even as its subsidiary RPL's IPO received overwhelming response from investors.

The wide-based NSE's NIFTY closed 0.45 points down at 3573.05, after hitting an all-time high of 3592.75.

The volume of business, however, eased to Rs 5,050.29 crore from Rs 5,296.79 crore yesterday. RIL remained the top traded security with the highest turnover of Rs 614.20 cr followed by Tata Steel (Rs 215.21 cr), RCVL (Rs 144.35 cr), Satyam (Rs 106.52 cr) and Hind Zinc (Rs 102.46 cr). The broad-based BSE-100 Index eased by 6.73 points to 6,226.21 from previous close of 6,232.94.

The BSE-200 Index and the Dollex-200 showed small changes at 1,488.57 and 549.64 at close compared to previous close of 1,489.32 and 549.18 respectively. The BSE-500 Index remained steady at 4,767.80 from yesterday's close of 4,768.05 and the Dollex-30 ended slightly up at 2,190.48 from 2,189.25.

RIL fell back by 20.60 to 974.30, Satyam Computers by 63.40 to 808.15, Dr Reddy's Lab by 17.80 to 1481.20, SBI by 15.65 to 920.40, Hindalco by 4.45 to 211.10, Tata Power by 4.25 to 579.65, Wipro by 6.20 to 548.95, Bajaj Auto by 8.15 to 2972.05, NTPC by 3.05 to 136.10, Hero Honda by 853.15, HDFC by 2.10 to 1272.65 and Cipla by 2.65 to 659.25.

However, Infosys Tech firmed up by 18.95 to 3296.20, L&T by 55.90 to 2705.90, Grasim by 43.85 to 2396.30, HLL by 8.30 to 284.80, Ranbaxy by 31.05 to 504.15, Tata Motor by 25.35 to 977.65, TataSteel by 10.50 to 654.55, ONGC by 9.40 to 1339.85, Maruti Udyog by 22.70 to 903.90, ICICI Bank by 3.15 to 590.15, REL by 6.30 to 640.15, GACL by 2.65 to 659.25, and TCS Ltd by 5.55 to 1994.05.