And the market outlook is still bad, as investor confidence is completelyshaken, said a dealer with a local firm. And the continuous selling by theforeign firms over the last few days is also adding to the market's woes.However, a select few do believe that the market has already bottomed outand it's now time to buy into fundamentally good stocks. For the optimists,opening on Monday would be weak, but the market is going to close with a netgain on the first day of the settlement on the BSE.

Although the general sentiment is weak, market players, in their search fora reason, are picking up Zee for the current mess. According to a dealer,Zee's fiscal 2000 performance has prompted a lot of FII selling in thecounter. And since the media powerhouse contributes a substantial weight tothe leading indices, the company's bad showing in the market is contributinga lot to the market's fall.

Although the local funds are buying at lower levels, most of theinstitutional dealers rebuff these orders as `peanuts' against the magnitudeof sell orders from the FIIs. ``Against 20,000-25,000 shares sell ordersfrom the FIIs, domestic funds are buying in 500-1000 shares. There's no waythe latter can match the former and save the market sentiment to dip on theface of this sell-off,'' said an institutional dealer with a localbrokerage.

However, for some dealers, there is not much downside from the currentlevel. ``After a weak opening on Monday, the Sensex is likely to go up fromaround 4084 level,'' said a dealer with a local brokerage house. ``For methe new trading range will be 4050 and 4700,'' he added.

On Friday, Infosys, Wipro, HDFC, HDFC Bank and L&T were some of the stockswhich held firm for sometime amidst the massive sell-off witnessed all over.But continuous supply of stocks took toll on these counters as well as andclosed lower.

A sharp rally on overnight Nasdaq failed to have any positive impact ondomestic markets on Friday. Immediately after a relatively firm opening, thesoftware stocks started showing weakness, and the momentum gathered speedduring the second half. A large number of stocks dipped to their lowercircuit of 12 per cent.

While market remained extermely bearish, ITC, and L&T managed to attracthuge buying interest, and managed to show a positive close. The tradingvolume remained low.

Mirroring the sentiment, the BSE sensex opened at 4243.54 and touched a highof 4267.87 points. The low for the day was 4102.77 points. Similarily, theNifty lost 23 points and closed at 1281.35 points. The low for the day was1276.40 points whereas the high for the day was 1326.30. Meanwhile, advancesstood at 447 and the number of declines was at 1120. At the same time, 155stocks remained unchanged. The trading volume on the BSE stood at Rs 2439crore, and same figure on the BSE stood at Rs 3522 crore.

Meanwhile, stocks which gained more than 7.9 per cent were: Bombay Deying,Balaji Ind, Vakrangee, KSB Pump, Cybermate, Khandwala Sec.. Other gainersfor the day were: Smithkline Consumer, Alfa Laval, Selan Exp, LupinChemicals, Network, Jain Irrigation.

At the same time, stocks which dipped more than 7.9 per cent were: Zee Tele,HFCL, SSI, Silverline, Pentamedia, Global Tele, DSQ Soft, Sterlite, RelCapital, HCL Info, ICICI, Sun Pharma, Philips, Orient Info, Shyam Tele,Sibar Soft, Aftek Info. Other losers for the day were: Infosys, Wipro,Rolta, ACC, Ranbaxy, Bhel, Tata Elxsi, Videocon Int, Indogulf, UPL, GNFC,Hero Honda, Trent, Hoechst Mar, German Remedies, Usha Beltron, Bata,Kesoram, Zenith Comp, PSI Data, Mirc Electric.