Friday's selling, especially in the infotech counters, is being interpreted as an indication of another imminent decline in the market, since this comes after consistent FII buying over the whole of this week.

Dealers say that the supply of stocks at higher levels is still continuing and this is the most worrying factor. "The market is unable to sustain higher levels," said a dealer with a domestic brokerage. However, according to an analyst, the market is dipping with high volumes and soon the market might be in the over-sold zone.

On Friday, total turnover on the BSE was at Rs 4,239 crore, while on NSE it was Rs 4,738 crore. The number of advances stood at 559, and the number of declines stood at 918. Around 182 stocks remained unchanged.

With sustained supply of paper, values remained under pressure for a major part of the day. Barring few, almost all the software stocks showed a negative close. Pentamedia, and DSQ Soft dipped 8 per cent but recovered in the end. HFCL, Infosys, Silverline, and Aptech also showed a negative close.

Other stocks like HLL, ITC, MTNL, and ICICI also showed a negative close. Among the pivotals, ACC was the only counter which attracted buying interest and gained 4 per cent. Reliance showed a weak trend, and closed marginally higher.

For the Sensex, the fall was mainly on account of HLL, which dipped 3 per cent. ICICI, MTNL also made their contribution.

Stocks which gained more than 7.9 per cent were Vikas WSP, Shyam Tele, Zenith Info, Nicholas Piramal, EIH, Khyati Resort, Jain Studio, Nath Seeds, Birla Eric. Other gainers for the day were Parke Davis, Advent Comp, Top Cassettes, Sarvodaya Lab, Vakrangee, Ram Info, BSEL Info, Motherson Sumi.

At the same time, stocks which gained more than 7.9 per cent were: Himalaya Int, Atcom, Adani Exports, VXL Inst, Mobile Tele, Cybermate, Nucle Soft.

Other losers for the day were: Pentamedia, Colgate, TV 18, Alok Text, ICI India, Zenith Comp, Anco Com, Shree Rama, Nexus Soft, Pun Com, Wockhardt.

On Friday, the FII investment figures published by Sebi shows a net inflow figure of Rs 110 crore for Thursday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the corresponding figures were Rs 186 crore and Rs 180 crore positive. Although a net inflow of Rs 460 crore is a good sign for the market, "but the fact remains that this has failed to enthuse the broking community," said an institutional dealer with domestic brokerage. But according to market grapevine, a handful of FIIs are active in a select few technology counters only. On Friday, dealers said there was a buy order from an FII client for 2 lakh shares of Infosys, and this is what suddenly pulled the scrip higher during mid-session. Also, dealers say that the HFCL counter is one, where a lot of FII trades are taking place.

The weakness in the new economy counters was exposed to some extent on Friday as a number of these scrips failed to touch their previous close. As a BSE broker pointed out, the intra-day high for most of the frontline infotech scrips was lower than their Thursday close or at best just above that mark. "This shows that there is still weakness in the ICE sector counters and in the absence of any drivers, they might witness another sharp fall over the next week," said the broker.