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Smart rally at BSE

Led by the Indian Tobacco Company, pivotals staged a smart rally on the Bombay Stock Exchange Monday, following good buying support from foreign institutional investors and speculators.

The BSE sensex registered a gain of about 49 points at the current settlement's inaugural session.

High expectations about the Reserve Bank of India's credit policy, -- to be announced Tuesday, boosted the FII and speculator sentiments, market sources said.

Mirroring the trend, the BSE sensitive index opened at 4123.80 points, touched the day's high of 4157.01 and declined to the low of 4103.63. Later, it closed at 4154.84 points (the previous close was 4106.26 points).

Similarly, the broadbased BSE 100 index closed higher by 32.00 points (to 1790.48) against the previous close of 1768.48 points.

The BSE-900 and dollex indices gained moderately by 5.13 and 2.36 points to 400.37 and 184.14 points, as against the previous close of 395.24 and 181.78 points respectively.

The FIIs bought about 500,000 ITC shares.

Much speculative buying was witnessed at prime counters like Castrol, State Bank and Tata Tea, a leading BSE broker said.

The ITC gained smartly between Rs 36.00 to Rs 641.25 over the previous BSE close. And on the NSE, it gained Rs 38.15 to Rs 647.65 over Friday's close.

Bajaj Auto scrip lost Rs 6.75 to Rs 612.75. This was an immediate reaction to the company's half yearly results which showed a moderate decline in net profits thanks to a substantial decline in sales.

The total turnover on the BSE was Rs 9.22 billion.

ITC topped turnover, registering Rs 3.29 billion. It was followed by Reliance (Rs 1.49 billion), State Bank (Rs 970.7 million), Tata Tea (Rs 586.1 million) and Castrol (Rs 495.7 million).

UNI