The UTI chief had gone on record earlier that he would be hunting forbargains in a market where several growth stocks have seen sharp drops invaluations over the last fortnight. "We are not selling. Instead, we arebuying to the extent we can, across all sectors in companies wherevaluations are attractive," he pointed out.

UTI is sitting pretty, having exited before the market peaked inmid-February. In the current year ending on June 30, 2000, it is expected toreport reserves of around Rs 5,000 crore. As on March 31, 2000 reserves hadalready touched Rs 4,200 crore while its net income was Rs 8,991 crore.

Marketmen, by and large, are unsure whether the market has bottomed out oris in for a further correction. But, as one source in SG Asia Securities(India) Private Ltd suggested, it appears that the support at 3800 levelwill not be tested.

He maintains that most domestic funds/institutions preferred to hold cashrather than invest in a market dominated by sellers. He added that if theFed rate hike was more than the 50 basis point hike widely anticipated itcould induced fresh sales early next week.

A source in Vickers Ballas Stockbroking feels that there could be a furthercorrection of about 300 points from Friday's closing level of 4107 of theBSE Sensex. He believes that the hammering down of Zee Telefilmspost-declaration of results is overdone.

For a change, leading operators have preferred to stay neutral in the faceof aggressive selling from FIIs in key pivotals like DSQ Software, GlobalTele, Satyam Computers, Zee Telefilms and Himachal Futuristic, says a dealerwith Alpic Securities.