With selling pressure coming in at Zee, Infosys and Satyam, the three indexheavyweights, the BSE Sensex closed 120 points down at 4458 against itsprevious close of 4578.

According to brokers, retail investors should stay away from the markets forthe time being, as ``even market veterans with years of experience areregularly going wrong in their predictions,'' said a BSE broker. With supplyof stocks is coming in plenty, the market is looking more and more riskywith each passing day, he added.

Also the broking community is concerned about the weakening rupee, whichbreached the Rs 44 mark in afternoon trades on Wednesday and closed belowthe level. The concern mainly arises from the possibility that the FIIsmight feel the rupee will weaken further vis-a-vis the US dollar. In such acase they might like to sell now to enter at a later day when ruppe willbecome cheaper for them.

The behaviour of the FIIs is also becoming unpredictable. ``Going by thebehaviour of the FIIs, it seems even these foreign investors have shed theirlong-term investment attitudes and has turned traders of late,'' said adealer with a domestic broking house. While the Sebi FII investment figureshad shown a net outflow of Rs 444.3 crore for Monday, the correspondingfigure for Tuesday is at Rs 2.9 crore negative.

On Tuesday, it was rumoured that an FII had bought around 1.4 lakh sharesof Visualsoft at around Rs 7,300 each from two domestic mutual funds.According to Sebi, the total FII turnover on Tuesday was at Rs 450 crore.The FIIs apart, the market is also concerned about the attitude of thedomestic funds who are mainly sitting on the sidelines, with intermitentselling in select counters at higher levels.

Despite a sharp fall on Nasdaq on Tuesday night, stocks opened firm onWednesday morning but immediately showed a sharp dip. This dip, however, didnot last for long, and prices moved up sharply. During the second halfhowever, as a result of huge selling pressure, almost all the softwarestocks showed a negative close. The impact of negative sentiment was alsofelt by non-software stocks. Trading volume remained reasonably high.

Mirroring the sentiment, the BSE Sensitive index opened at 4593.38 pointswhich was also the high for the day. Before closing at 4454 point, intra-dayit had dipped to a low of 4449.89 points.

Similarily, the Nifty lost 15.40 points and closed at 1363.15 points. Thelow for the day was 1359.65 points, and the high at 1391.35 points. On theBSE, advances stood at 611 whereas the declines were stood at 848. At thesame time, around 161 stocks remained unchaged. The trading volume on theBSE was at Rs 3232 crore, and the corresponding figure on the NSE was Rs4411 crore.