Mumbai: A selective rally in heavyweight counters like Hindustan Lever (HLL), Zee Telefilms, HPCL, Tisco and Reliance Industries (RIL) aided the SENSEX to end in positive terrain for the third session in a row at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on April 30 on hectic purchases by foreign as well as domestic funds.

Foreign Institutional Investors, who were believed to be heavy sellers in IT sector, reportedly bought ten lakh shares of Zee Telefilms while local funds were heavy buyers in HLL and few other old economy stocks.

A marginal rise in the SENSEX could be gauged by marked to moderate rally in index-based shares like HLL, HPCL, HDFC, L&T, Dr Reddy, RIL, Tisco and Zee Telefilms, a dealer said.

A few banking shares like BOI, J&K Bank, Andhra Bank and BOB attracted good buying support from retailers.

The BSE benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately lower at 2942.42 and gradually moved upwards to the intra-day high at 2962.40 in lacklustre activity before ending at 2959.79 as against yesterday's close of 2950.14, netting a gain of 9.65 points or 0.33 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index also improved further by 7.50 points to 1470.31 from previous close of 1462.81.

Blue-chip shares like Bajaj Auto, Grasim Ind, ICICI Bank, Infosys Tech, Satyam Computers, Hindalco and Telco witnessed heavy selling pressure and closed with marked losses.

Discounting a positive trend on Wall Street on April 29 night, operators preferred to booked profits in IT stocks including several second-line software counters.

PTI