Mumbai: Stocks continued their upward march and pushed the SENSEX up by another 56 points at close as bullish trend gained momentum at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Nov 28) on sustained buying from operators as well as retailers.

Speculators, which have been enlarging positions since the last couple of sessions, were believed to be encouraged by increased participation by retail investors and domestic mutual funds.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately higher at 4995.15 and rose further sharply to the intra-day high at 5050.56 before ending at 5044.82 as against yesterday's close of 4989.04, netting a rise of 55.78 points or 1.12 per cent.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index spurted by 32.06 points to 2594.34 from previous close of 2562.28.

The sudden net investments of Rs 159 crore on November 25 by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) also injected fresh confidence among speculators and retail investors, which generally anticipated drastic slow down in FII activity ahead of the year end, market sources said.

With the beginning of retailers' crucial participation, the market is expected to witness a long price rally once the SENSEX closed above 5060-level and the S&P CNX Nifty breached 1635-mark at close, sources added.

The SENSEX has failed to break this level as a result of a modest setback in heavyweight scrips like HLL, Infosys Tech, HPCL, ICICI Bank, Hero Honda, Ranbaxy Lab and Zee Telefilms due to profit booking.

RIL, Tisco, MTNL, Grasim, GACL, BHEL, Bajaj Auto, L&T, Dr Reddy's and ACC were prominent gainers.

PTI