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FII-buying sends Sensex soaring by 69 points, posts all-time high closing at 4728.78

Sustained buying support extended by the foreign institutional investors or FIIs led the Sensex to climb further by 69 points at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

Mirroring the uptrend, the BSE-30 Sensitive Index opened at 4656 (intra-day low) and ended at 4728.78 (intra-day high), showing a net gain of 69.19 points as against the last close of 4659.59. Incidentally, this is a new all-time high. The Sensex's last all-time high closing was at 4717 on July 19.

Marketmen informed that pharma and FMCG scrips caught the FIIs' fancy, while infotech shares witnessed subdued activity. Infosys Technologies continued its downtrend, reflecting the fall in the scrip's ADR listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange of the US.

FIIs bought in Hindustan Lever, SBI and Ranbaxy counters. Domestic institutions also bought nominal quantity of some index-based shares, while booked profit at higher levels in others.

HLL rose by Rs 142 to end at Rs 2,720, SBI by Rs 18 to Rs 285, Ranbaxy by Rs 38 to Rs 866, ITC by Rs 6 to Rs 1005.

The BSE-100 index rose by 18.28 points to close at 2047.15 as compared to the last close of 2028.87. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices ended 3.57 points and 1.37 points higher at 467.79 and 1.37 points respectively.

Marketmen expect the Sensex to surpass the all-time high of 4810 if the trend of FII-buying witnessed on the bourses in recent times continues.

Brokers said that the FIIs are confident on account of the decisive end to the Kargil conflict, expectations of a majority government after the September-October general elections and strong economic fundamentals of the country.

Meanwhile, the S&P CNX Nifty Index ended 9.05 points higher at 1349.20 as against the last close of 1340.15.

The total turnover on the BOLT Network was Rs 20.63 billion from trading in 72 million shares.

Ranbaxy recorded the highest turnover of Rs 2.68 billion followed by SBI (Rs 2.13 billion) and Satyam Computers (Rs 1.66 billion). Other stocks that posted a high turnover were Digital Equipment, Zee Telefilms, ITC, Reliance, Pentafour, Infosys, HLL, Telco, Sterlite, L&T, MTNL and Siemens.

UNI

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