Mumbai: The SENSEX opened firm and later improved further in line with a fresh rally in select stocks at early stages on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on June 28 on continued buying support from investors.

The BSE Sensitive Index opened substantially up at 3,231.24 as against a close of 3,217.15 on June 27 night and later improved further to a high of 3,242.77 before being quoted at 3,241.62 at 10:30 hours (IST).

Punters and public investors which had turned cautious earlier in view of some negative factors, responded positively to encouraging developments like net purchases by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on June 25 and 26 coupled with stocks rally on Wall Street in the past couple of sessions following an upbeat assessment of the economy.

The Dow closed up by 149.81 and the NASDAQ composite index rose to 29.89 on June 27.

RIL and VSNL suffered a sharp setback due to selling pressure. Selling in VSNL was attributed to reports that the company is expected to lose about Rs 500 crore to be received as settlement charges for carrying traffic during April-June 2002 from WorldCom.

PTI