Uncertainty about who'll be the new US president persisted and as a result operators preferred to settle their outstanding positions. However, PSU stocks in telecom sector were in limelight on Friday on the rumours that the centre may consider a proposal to expedite the process of their privatisation in a meeting scheduled for Saturday.

Stock market resumed on a weak note with the Sensex opening at 4011.06 and rose marginally to 4032.94 points. After reaching this level it experienced across-the-board selling and the Sensex touched an intra day low of 3930.35 before closing at 3941.13 points, registering a loss of 81.37 points.

Similarly, S&P CNX Nifty lost almost 30 points to close at 1240.95 points at the NSE.

According to dealers domestic financial institutions (FIs) booked profit in refinery and pharma sector scrips. These counters have risen smartly during the current settlement ending on Friday and at every rise FIs have liquidated these stocks from their portfolio. FIs were active sellers in Reliance Petro, HPCL and MTNL.

PSU scrips VSNL, MTNL and BHEL were the only remarkable gainers as all other major scrips, including leading IT stocks, lost heavily on account of all-round selling. VSNL had breached the first upper circuit by rising more than 8.98 per cent to close at Rs 288.50. MTNL and BHEL also gained considerably with the scrips rising about 4.50 per cent and 2.16 per cent to close at Rs 170.55 and Rs 125.15 respectively. Digital Equipment was the only IT stock which rose smartly by more than 7.70 per cent to close at Rs 550.45.

The losers list included many major scrips besides index heavyweights. Zee Telefilms lost 6.40 per cent to close at Rs 291.55, while Satyam Computer eased by 5.12 per cent .