According to marketmen, the reversal in trends at the Nasdaq exchangepartially affected market sentiments on the local bourses. Foreign anddomstic institutional investors were cautious and stayed away from activeparticipation in view of downtrend in the Nasdaq. Besides, the sellingpressure from FIIs in key counters added fuel into it.

The sharp drop of over 144 points in Dow Jones Industrial Average and morethan 13 points fall in the Nasdaq in the US, technology and media stocksmoved down marginally following speculative selling pressure, dealers said.Mirroring the trend, the S&P CNX Nifty opened higher at 1464.30 points,moved in a narrow range between 1458.50 (low) and 1485.50 (high) beforeclosing at 1467.20 points, gaining 3.55 points over the previous close of1463.65 points.

The top gainers were: IPCL, which shot up by 11.69 per cent to Rs 69.25 fromRs 62, Tata Power 11.69 per cent to Rs 71.20 (63.75), MTNL 9.41 per cent toRs 227.20 (207.65), BSES 6.27 per cent to Rs 320.25 (301.35) and TELCO 4.38per cent to Rs 134.50 (128.85).

About 416 securities advanced, 507 declined while 65 remained unchanged. 61securities have touched their price bands on Friday.