Mumbai: In lacklustre activity, the Sensex noticed very range-bound movements at early stages at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today on alternate bouts of buying and selling.

Dealers attributed listless trading to covering short as well long positions ahead of expiry of June contract on Thursday.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened slightly better at 4742.80 as against yesterday's close of 4735.86 and was trapped in a narrow breadth of 4752.47 and 4724.46 before being quoted at 4727.72 at 10.30 am.

Slowdown in Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) inflow also affected the market sentiment and operators also preferred to sit on fence till the presentation of Union Budget.

Larsen & Toubro was re-listed today at 620 (Rs two paid-up) and moved in a wide range between 690 and 511.

According to some analysts the market is critically poised and waiting for direction.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 23.60 points and 19.77 points last night respectively.

Among top losers, GlaxoConsumer was quoted down by 4.15 per cent, LIC Housing Fin by 3.43 per cent, VSNL by 2.88 per cent, Torrent Pharma by 2.82 per cent, Novartis by 2.32 per cent, Indian Hotel by 2.02 per cent and M&M by 1.99 per cent.

However, Tamilnadu Newsprint was up by 7.96 per cent, Alstom Project by 3.04 per cent, HCL Tech by 2.86 per cent, BEML by 2.66 per cent and Cipla by 2.31 per cent.