Mumbai: Opening on a weak note, the Sensex reacted further downwards extending overnight losses during morning trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Sep 24, 2004) on profit selling by domestic funds and operators.

The BSE-30 share index opened marginally lower at 5527.22 as against yesterday's close of 5539.48 and immediately touched a high of 5551.04. Later emergence of selling pushed the Sensex down to quote at 5516.68 at 10:30 am, down by 22.80 points.

Negative overseas advises as well as soaring global crude oil prices continued to weigh on the market, dealer said.

On Wall Street the Dow-Jones industrial average deepened by 70.28 points while the Nasdaq Composite Index finished barely steady last night. Southeast Asian markets also displayed bearish trend this morning. The Hang Seng was down by 205 points, the Nikkei by 178 points and Singapore SP Index by 7 points at morning trade.

International crude oil prices spurted to $ 48.47 a barrel on concerns over supply disruptions also impacted negatively.

Index based share like RIL, SBI, ICICI Bank, Wipro, HDFC, Hero Honda, HPCL, REL and Tata Power showed marked falls while Bajaj Auto, Hindalco, Infosys, ITC, Tata Motor, Maruti and Ranbaxy showed remarkable gains.