This was the third straight day loss for Sensex which came 35 points short -- 4965 points -- of the 5,000 mark last week. The fancied index has lost nearly 176 points due to heavy selling pressure in the last three days.

The session started on a subdued note and the 30-scrip Sensex dropped from the day's high of 4813.73 to 4720.19, before closing at 4729.73, showing a sizeable loss of 94.71 points from the previous close of 4824.44. The BSE-100 index too dropped by 43.01 points to 2110.23 as against the previous close of 2153.24.

The other stock exchanges also followed a similar path. The S&P CNX Nifty index of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) opened at 1412.05, touched the day's high of 1430.80 fell tothe day's low of 1397.70, before closing at 1410.70, showing a net loss of 1.30 points from the previous close of 1412.00.

Brokers said heavy margins imposed by the BSE restricted business activity and there was no fresh buying by local operators. Barring Satyam and Infosys, most of the counters witnessed selling pressure. Reports that country's export growth came down to a meagre 2.11 per cent in July after recording double-digit growth rates for earlier two successive months and rising oil imports for April-July quarter in dollar terms were other dampening factors, they said.

Punters continued to lighten their overbought outstanding positions for the second consecutive day in the wake of strict measures taken by the BSE authorities to curb volatility in share prices.

`Something wrong'

NEW DELHI: Former finance minister Manmohan Singh today said that sounding of alarm bells by the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) over the current bullish trends indicated that ``something iswrong'' with the stock markets.

``I do not want to sound an alarm as this could effect the investors sentiments,'' he said adding that SEBI was already monitoring the situation.