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Pivotals, cement, FMCG stocks lead rally; Sensex up 62 points to 4792.10

Equities continued their upward rally on good buying support extended by domestic operators and foreign institutional investors, spurring the Sensex to rise by 62 points at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

Mirroring the uptrend, the BSE-30 Sensitive Index (Sensex) opened at 4762.72, witnessed a low of 4744.95 and ended at 4792.10 (day's high), showing a net gain of 62.32 points or 1.31 per cent over Monday's close of 4729.78.

Marketmen said that the there was hectic buying in index-based scrips and a broad-range of B1 and B2 group of scrips. Cement and fast moving consumer goods scrips gained on account of favourable buying support extended by punters. However, software scrips fell on account of profit-booking by domestic financial institutions.

Infosys Technologies ended Rs 25 lower at Rs 5,525, Pentafour Software fell by Rs 7 to Rs 635, Ranbaxy fell by Re 1 to Rs 1,049, Tisco increased by Rs 5 to Rs 162, Hindustan Lever rose by Rs 23 to Rs 2600, Telco rose by Rs 9 to Rs 316, ACC by Rs 2 to Rs 238.

The Sensex is now just 18 points away from its all-time high of 4810.

The BSE-100 index rose by Rs 27.03 points to end at Rs 2164.06 from the last close of 2137.03.

The BSE-200 index ended 6.10 points higher at 498.38, while the dollex index ended 2.37 points higher at 190.70. The BSE-500 index ended 17.82 points higher at 1477.95.

The total turnover on the BOLT network was Rs 23.91 billion from trading in 119.2 million shares.

Ranbaxy Labs recorded the highest turnover of Rs 1.54 billion followed by Satyam Computers (Rs 1.26 billion) and L&T (Rs 1.18 billion).

Others that recorded a high turnover were Tata Tea, Reliance, Telco, Tisco, ITC, SBI, Zee Telefilms, Digital Equipment, ACC, MTNL, Videocon and BHEL.

Dealers said the Tata shares were subdued after a good showing on Monday.

At the National Stock Exchange, the benchmark S&P CNX Nifty rose 16 points to 1385 from Monday's close.

Since July, the Sensex has touched and gone past the 4700 mark several times. On July 14, the Sensex closed at 4710; on July 19, it closed at 4717, touching 4757 in intra-day trading; on July 22, it closed at 4729; on August 18, it closed at 4705 and on August 23, it closed at 4730, touching 4767 in intra-day trading.

The NSE Nifty's closing values soared past the 1350 mark on several occasions since July. On July 19, the S&P CNX Nifty closed at 1350; on August 18, it closed at 1363; and on August 23, it closed at 1369. Today's close at 1385 is an all-time high.

The rupee was steady in the inter-bank foreign exchange market and closed marginally lower at 43.52 to US $. Yesterday, the Indian unit closed at 43.50 as the central bank's resolved to shore up the rupee through off-market measures. On Friday last, the rupee was at an all-time closing low of 43.57.

The foreign exchange market was generally steady and the rupee was range-bound as trading tended was ordinary.

The forward premia hardened, with the six-month premium closing at 4.75 per cent and the one-year premium at 4.98 per cent.

UNI

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