The volume of business had been adversely affected due to the restrictions on operators to carry forward theirpositions to the next day. The BSE sensitive index opened marginally down at 3219.98 and gradually moved downwards to close at 3180.73 as against Wednesday's close of 3230.60, showing a net loss of 49.87 points. The BSE-100 index dipped by 22.45 points to 1393.74 from its previous close of 1416.19. Dealers said all eyes were on tomorrow's meeting of the securities and exchange board of India (SEBI), which is likely to discuss the prevailing situation in the market. Operators were optimistic that SEBI would relax bull margins that had led to low volume of business for the last couple of weeks. However, they did not rule out a strong resistance at 3150 level.

The BSE-200 and the Dollex were quoted down at 317.36 and 124.73 compared with previous close of 322.23 and 126.86, respectively. The volume of business was very low at Rs.549.55 crore compared with yesterday's turnover of Rs 763.68 crore. ITC recorded the highest turnover of Rs 116.76 crore followed by Satyam Computer (Rs 115.11 crore), HLL (Rs.49.60crore), Reliance (Rs.46.91 crore) and Zee Telefilms (Rs.40.85 crore). Market leader ITC Edged up by Rs 1.75 to Rs 634.50. HLL lost substantially by Rs 70.25 to Rs 1525.25, Satyam Computer by Rs 6 to Rs 372 and TELCO by Rs 5 to Rs 158.20. Reliance was fractionally up at Rs 141.30 from its previous close of Rs 141.20.