According to brokers, although expectation of good results from leading IT companies and some other non-IT companies will keep the market sentiment positive for sometime, but that's a temporary driver. "Also, in case the actual results fail to meet the expectations, there will be severe hammering of the respective stocks," said a dealer with a domestic broking house.

On Monday, the market sentiment is likely to get a boost from the ex-spilt price of HLL, which is entering the no-delivery mode for its earlier announced 10-for-1 split. On Friday, HLL closed at Rs 2,836 on the BSE, marginally down from its previous close of Rs 2,889.

On the negative side, the broking community is keeping a close tab on the continuous FII selling. With a Rs 118 crore net outflow for Thursday, foreign investors have taken out a total of Rs 1,045 crore from the Indian markets during June. And given the rising net outstanding positions, due to operators' speculative activities, if the fund-based buying does not resume, "we are likely to enter into another bearish phase," said an FII dealer.

Additionally, for Monday, Friday's Nasdaq trading, where too the sentiment doesn't look too good, can have some impact.

On Friday, the volatility factor was at its peak. As a result of decline on Nasdaq on Thursday night, the opening was weak for most of the software stocks and remained dull during the first half. With huge selling coming in, values declined sharply in the second half. However, during the last 10 minutes, stocks like HFCL and Zee Tele recovered sharply from their lower circuit of 8 per cent. The recovery on both these counters was around 6 per cent from the day's low. Stocks like HLL, Reliance and ITC, however, remained firm for a major part of the day. But the other non-IT stocks remained weak. Cement stocks which gained on Thursday, fell sharply on Friday. L&T was a major loser with a fall of around 8 per cent.

Mirroring the market sentiment, the Sensex opened at 4745.47 points, touched a peak of 4792.69 points, and closed at 4748 points. The low for the day was 4694.88 points. Similarly, the S&P CNX Nifty on the NSE lost 14 points, and closed at 1487.70 points. The low for the day was 1462.45 points, and the high was at 1490.65 points. The number of advances on the BSE was at 530, while the number of declines was 891.

Around 150 stocks remained unchanged. The trading volume on the BSE was relatively lower at Rs 3,581 crore and the corresponding figure on the NSE was Rs 4,866 crore. Stocks which gained more than 7.9 per cent were Escorts, Voltas, Bausch & Lomb, Carrier Aircon, Colour Chips, Pidilite, Ami Computers, Nat Radio, Gemini Com. Other gainers for the day were Sibar Soft, Salora Int, Polaris, Gruh Finance, Tata Telecom, Ceat, Mobile Tele, Pudumjee, Sela Exp, Tata Timken Hotel Leela, Optel Tele, Timex Watch.

At the same time, stocks which dipped more than 7.9 per cent were SB&T Int, Baron Info, Fortune Info, Vision Tech, Lyka Lab, Sri Sarita, Movilex Irr, Top Casst, Snail Forging.