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FIIs part with Rs 600 million to pick up shares from public institutions; Sensex spurts 99 points, stops short of 3400; day's turnover of Rs 20.48 billion a record

Equities at the Bombay Stock Exchange continued their gains today, with the Sensex breaching past the psychological barrier of 3400 and touching its peak level in the last six months.

The BSE-30 Sensitive Index opened at 3356.19. It touched an intra-day high of 3400.97, but settled a little lower at 3397.84 at the fag end, showing a net gain of 98.75 points over Thursday's close of 3299.09. The Sensex touched an intra-day low of 3340.51.

Marketmen informed that the foreign institutional investors were the major buyers in the market. According to reliable sources, FIIs bought to the tune of Rs 600 million.

''FIIs were buying stocks off-loaded by public institutions, who were booking profits at higher levels,'' said a leading broker.

Local operators were busy squaring their outstanding positions on the last day of the current trading cycle.

The FIIs pressed sales in MTNL, Satyam Computers, ITC, Reliance, L&T and SBI.

''The FIIs appear bullish on the Indian market and the present uptrend is expected to continue for sometime,'' said an analyst with a domestic brokerage.

The BSE-100 index ended 47.67 points higher at 1509.31 as against the previous close of 1461.64.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices ended 9.96 and 3.90 points higher at 346.78 and 135.78 respectively.

The BSE today recorded the highest turnover on a single trading day, with volumes on the BOLT network reaching Rs 20.48 billion. The number of shares traded on the bourse was 92 million.

Satyam Computers posted the highest turnover of R 2.42 billion, followed by ITC (Rs 2.30 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 2.28 billion), Reliance (Rs 1.67 billion) and SBI (Rs 1.46 billion).

Other scrips that registered high volumes were Zee Telefilms, Telco, Tata Tea, Tisco, ACC, MTNL, Castrol, L&T, Dr Reddy's and HLL.

UNI

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