Mumbai: After a steady start, the market turned cautious and was trapped in a small range in lacklustre activity during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange today (Oct 20, 2004) following weak advices from Asian markets.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened steady at 5738.44 as against yesterday's close of 5738.11 and later fluctuated in a narrow range of 5750.14 and 5727.13 before being quoted at 5731.76 at 10.30 am, down by 6.35 points.

Operators and retail investors adopted a cautious stance in view of a sharp slide in Nikkei and Hang Seng during the morning trading. The Nikkei and the Hang Seng were quoted down by 153.43 points and 154.61 points at around 10.30 am.

However, PSU stocks attracted some buying support at the early stages.

The market seemed to have discounted strong factors such as reversal in crude oil prices and continued FII inflows.

Crude oil prices fell to $ 53 a barrel yesterday and Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) reported net investment of Rs 111.10 crore on Monday.

Blue chip counters including Tata Steel, RIL, REL, ICICI Bank, HLL, GACL, Cipla, Satyam Computers, Wipro and Bajaj Auto were among the losers.

However, Tata Motors, SBI, ONGC, HPCL, L&T, HDFC, BHEL and Dr Reddy's showed marked gains on fresh buying support.