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Market firm as FIIs sustain support; Sensex spurts 44 points, 3096.10

Equities continued an upward march on buying support extended by the foreign institutional investors (fiis) at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The BSE Sensitive Index or Sensex rose by 44 points to 3096.10 points at the fag end from the previous close of 3051.93 points. Opening marginally higher at 3054.31, the key index drifted lower to 3041.09 and witnessed a high of 3105.24 during the day.

Marketmen informed that the FIIs bought shares of tobacco giant ITC, Zee Telefilms and State Bank of India. Domestic institutions showed considerable interest on the ITC counter, while mutual funds including the Unit Trust of India sold key index-based pivotals at peak levels and booked a profit.

An uptrend in Asian bourses aided bullish sentiments, a broker said, adding that the rupee's stability against the dollar kept feelings in the market calm.

The BSE-100 index closed at 1374.45 points from the previous 1356.37 points, showing a net gain of 18.08 points. The BSE-200 index ended at 317.05 points, exhibiting a climb of 3.57 points, while the Dollex closed at 124.03 points, increasing by 1.37 points.

The total turnover on the BOLT network was Rs 12.55 billion from 51.2 million shares traded.

ITC registered the highest turnover of Rs 2.67 billion followed by Satyam Computer (Rs 1.26 billion), Zee Telefilms (Rs 1.22 billion), Pentafour Software (Rs 917.2 million) and SBI (Rs 913.7 million). Other shares that recorded a high turnover included Reliance, Castrol, L&T, Dr Reddy's, Tata Tea, Telco, HLL, Infosys, ACC and Tisco.

UNI