The closing rates showed a small changes while the volume of business remained moderate. The BSE Sensitive index opened at 2891.36, touched the day's high of 2895.90, fell to the day's low of 2856.32, before closing at 2895.84 over the previous close of 2889.71. The BSE-100 index however, eased slightly by 0.17 points to 302.14 from the previous close of 302.78.

Brokers said that the results by Hindustan Lever helped the market to maintain a steady trend, despite selling pressure by domestic institutions and speculative operators. The foreign institutional investors (FIIs) made purchases in IPCL, L&T while sizeable purchases by the company circles were reported in Telco and Tisco scrip. The UTI was generally a seller today.

The HLL scrip touched the day's high of Rs 1622immediately after the announcement of the results but did not find any buying support and fell to 1571, the day's low before closing at 1615, higher by Rs 25 from the previous close on some institutional buying interest

On the NSE, pivotals, after a positive start, reacted towards the fag end on emergence of heavy profit selling. The S&P CNX Nifty index eased by 3.65 to close at 841.60 from the previous close of 845.25. The total volume of business stood at Rs 1,525.44 crore. The exchange witnessed 409 scrips advance with 622 scrips decline and 70 scrips remained unchanged. About 60 securities hit their price bands.