MUMBAI, February 12: The sentiments remained steady on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday in absence of speculative support. Resuming steady, share prices moved narrowly on alternative bouts of buying and selling. The sentiment improved at the close due to excellent results by corporate major, Hindustan Lever.The BSE Sensitive index opened marginally lower at 3289.45, touched inter-day high of 3299.50, before closing at 3293.89 points, thus showing a marginal gain of 0.98 points as compared to the previous close of 3292.91 points. The BSE-100 index gained by 1.04 points at 1420.29 as against its previous close of 1419.25 points.While foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold few pivotals, domestic FIs, led by UTI bought sizeable amount of heavy-weight shares, which kept the equity prices stable. The announcement of the merger of Hindustan Lever and Pond's took the investors by surprise and led to a small recovery in the Sensex at the close. The total turnover amounted to Rs 710.38 crore. Themarket sentiment was affected in the morning due to heavy transactions in demat shares of Reliance at the rate far below the market price.On the National Stock Exchange share prices continued to fall. The NSE-50 index, after a better start at 959.05 eased towards the fag-end and settled at 956.65 points, showing a fall of 2.25 from the last close of 958.90. The dollar NSE-50 (Defty) index opened weak at 857.50 and closed at 854.40, revealing a loss of 3.40 over the last close of 857.80. The market showed a total turnover of Rs 885.93 crore.
