Mumbai: The sensex opened moderately lower and witnessed irregular movements in extremely small range during morning trading on the Stock Exchange today (June 11, 2004) on alternate bouts of buying and selling.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened down at 4931.49 as against yesterday's close of 4944.64 and later moved in narrow range of 4945.86 and 4916.62 before being quoted at 4944.39 at 10.30 hrs (IST) fractionally down from last close.

Tisco, Tata Motor, Indian Hotel, Tata Info, Tata Elxsi, CMC, Tata Chem, Titan, Tata Power and Tata Tea were is the limelight on fresh buying prompted by reports that Tata Consultancy Services which has investments in other Tata group companies, has finally decided to go ahead with its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO).

The top heavyweight RIL, however, showed a moderate fall on reports about likely reduction in custom duties on both crude and petroleum products.

Other refinery stocks also were quoted moderately lower due to selling pressure.

Key counters like Bharti Tele, HPCL, Infosys Tech, ITC, MUL, REL, SBI and Wipro showed marked losses.

However, BHEL, Grasim, HDFC, ONGC and MTNL were other prominent shares among the gainers.

Meanwhile, in cross currency trades, the Euro was quoted at Rs 54.35/38, Pound Sterling at Rs 82.39/42 and the Japanese Yen (100) at Rs 40.92/94.