Mumbai: Share prices opened weak extending overnight losses on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Jan 29, 2004) following profit booking by operators and local funds.

Negative global advices also partly aided the downtrend as on Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index dipped by 141.55 points and 38.67 points last night.

South East Asian markets also exhibited bearish trend at the morning session, with the Nikkei down by nearly 145 points and the Hang Seng by 214 points.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened lower at 5,865.21 as against yesterday's close of 5,876.05 and touched a high of 5,886.88. Later, it dipped to quote at 5,828.05 at 10.30 hrs (IST) on profit selling.

Market participants attributed the decline in share values to squaring up of long positions on the last day of derivative segment today.

Index-based shares like Bharti Tele, BHEL, Dr Reddy, HLL, HPCL, Hindalco, ICICI Bank, Infosys Tech, LNT, Satyam Computer, SBI and Wipro showed marked falls on heavy selling.

Meanwhile, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) who slowed down their activity in the past couple of days, reportedly bought shares worth Rs 355 crore on Tuesday.

All eyes are set on the announcement of quarterly results by RIL today, a dealer said.

Among major losers, IndoRama dropped by 5.66 per cent, Asian Paint by 4.63 per cent, IPCL by 4.20 per cent, Thermax by 3.75 per cent, Bharti Tele by 3.43 per cent and Wipro by 3.30 per cent. However, Hexaware, SAIL, Dredging Corp, Hindustan Zinc and Dena Bank were quoted marginally higher.