On Thursday, the penultimate day of the current settlement on the Bombay Stock Exchange, after opening higher at 4669.78 points, the Sensex sea-sawed by around 100 points, between 4688 and 4588. It closed the day with a net loss of 42.88 points at 4601.19 against its Wednesday close of 4644.07. The S&P CNX Nifty, on the National Stock Exchange, however, closed marginally lower at 1323.30 points against 1326.40 points - a net loss of 3.10 points. After opening marginally higher, the day's high and the low for the Nifty were 1345.85 and 1317.50.

The 43-point drop in the Sensex is being seenas a good sign by a number of market players. "Given the selling pressure in the market during the closing hours of Thursday, it seems the operators have liquidated some of their outstanding positions and the market should remain firm on Friday with activities limited to some select counters,'' says Nikunj Modi at Kisan Ratilal Choksey Shares and Securities. Agrees Chirag Sanghvi at Asit C Mehta Investment Intermediaries. "The markets went into the anticipated correction on Thursday. And it is understood that the huge long positions have also come down by around Rs 150 crore. Also, the FIIs had bought heavily on Wednesday (net inflow was Rs 95 crore). All these are healthy signs for the market to go up from the current levels," says Sanghvi.

And for the next few trading sessions, most of the players are optimistic of another bull run. ``The undertone is bullish and in the next few days, we are likely to enter into a new bull phase. We expect the Sensex to surpass the earlier high of 4810 in a few daystime,'' says Sanghvi.

Technically also, the market is set for another rally. "If the Sensex crosses the 4688-level (Thursday's high) on Friday, we can see the market going into another bull phase. In that case, the index can cross its previous all-time high and touch the 5050 level,'' says Neel B Dalal, a broker with the BSE. However, a few others believe that the market is slotted to go down from the present level, and could touch the 4250 level mark. ``Looking at the underlying strengths and the weaknesses of different scrips, we are expecting the market to remain weak on Friday again and within the next few days, the Sensex can go down to the 4500-level. If this level also proves to be unsustainable, we can see the Sensex settling around the 4250-level till the elections,'' says Ambareesh Bagila at Kotak Securities.

On Thursday, Telco and Digital were the two stocks which were in the limelight. And UTI was reported to be the buyers in the latter counter. While the Telco scrip closed at Rs 253 aftertouching a high at Rs 256, the Digital scrip closed at Rs 689. Among the software stocks, Infosys closed lower at Rs 5061 (after touching a low of Rs 5005), Satyam at Rs 1840 and Pentafour at Rs 1335.