Mumbai: The Sensex opened strong and later moved further upwards on the back of a rally in banking stocks during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Dec 12, 2003) on increased foreign institutional investment (FII) activity during the past few days.

The BSE 30-share Sensitive Index opened remarkably up at 5321.49 as against yesterday's close of 5299.96 and later shot up to a high at 5343.91 before being quoted at 5311.94 at 10:30 hours (IST).

Oil public sector units (PSU) and banking stocks remained in the limelight following fresh demand from FIIs which have made net purchases of Rs 960 crore in two sessions on December 9 and 10, after a small net sales of Rs 47 crore on Monday, broker said.

FIIs reportedly absorbed all the sales made by the Unit Trust of India (UTI) in the last couple of days, brokers added.

The firm trend was also attributed to encouraging advices from New York where the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 10000 on Thursday for the first time since May 2002 and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 36.67 points.

PTI