Mumbai: The SENSEX opened firm and later fluctuated narrowly in line with moderate rally in select heavy-weighted counters at early stages on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on November 13 on fresh buying support.

The BSE Sensitive Index opened remarkably higher at 2,972.35 as against a close of 2,961.24 and later moved in a narrow range of 2,977.67 and 2,969.17 before being quoted at 2,969.40 at 10:30 hours (IST).

Attributing the upsurge in the BSE barometre to a rally in key stocks like RIL, MTNL, Infosys Technologies, HLL, Hero Honda, HPCL, Grasim Ind ad ACC, brokers said that some foreign funds were believed to be net buyers in HLL besides a block deal of about 5.40 lakh shares in Hero Honda.

The Unit Trust of India (UTI) was said to have sold these shares to a leading foreign fund.

The sentiment was also aided by a positive turnaround in New York Stocks that pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by about 121 points and the NASDAQ Composite Index by about 33 points on November 12 night.

PTI