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Sensex goes up 61.65 points; up by 116.57 over 3 sessions

The Sensex and Natex shot up 61.65 and 23.68 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange as equity prices gained on buying support from foreign institutional investors and domestic institutional investors on Thursday.

The market opened with buying support from FIIs and local institutions -- Life Insurance Corporation and General Insurance Corporation. The FIIs purchased a good amount of heavy-weighted scrips, whereas domestic institutions bought considerable amount of sidelight shares, a leading broker said.

The company circles were also seen in the market after the long span of time. They invested in Reliance Industries, said another broker, adding that the FIIs bought ITC, MTNL and Tata Power shares.

While LIC and GIC were seen at the cash counters, Unit Trust of India adopted a wait-and-watch role. In the intraday trading, UTI sold a nominal amount of shares from cash counters, a broker said.

Mirroring the uptrend, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) opened higher at 3835.80 points, touched a day's high of 3888.51 points, declined marginally on selling pressure from the domestic institutions, and closed at 3887.56 points, showing a net gain of 61.65 points as against its previous close of 3825.91 points.

The BSE-100 Index (Natex) improved to 1690.31 points over the last trading day's close of 1666.63 points, gaining 23.68 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices increased by 04.06 and 02.04 points to 377.28 and 173.27 points as compared to the previous day's close of 373.22 and 171.23 points respectively.

The statement of Union Finance Secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia in the World Bank-International Monetary Fund meeting in Hong Kong that India would continue to simplify procedures, speed up the decision-making process, and is committed to economic reforms to woo foreign investment, improved the sentiments of the FIIs.

The continuous appreciation of the Indian rupee in the forex market against the US dollar diverted the mood of domestic institutions, leading brokers said.

The total turnover on screen-based trading system increased to Rs 8.7 billion from Rs 6.98 billion involving 31.5 million shares.

The volume of business was led by ITC with a total turnover of Rs 3.1 billion, followed by Reliance Industries Rs 2.4 billion, SBI Rs 632.6 million, Tata Tea Rs 529.1 million, Castrol India Rs 221.4 million, MRF Rs 149.8 million, MTNL Rs 149.8 million, and TISCO Rs 126.5 million in the specified counters.

Good transactions were observed at ICICI Bank, Satyam Comp, Shriram Honda, Cipla, Bank of Baroda, Infosys Tech, Nat Alum, and Aptech in the B1 counters, and Kulk-Power, Infotech Ent, Hind Petro, Gas Authority of India Ltd, Centum Elect, Orient Info, and Castar Cap in the B2 groups.

UNI