Mumbai: The sensex opened moderately up and later rallied smartly rising past 5900-level during the morning trading as stocks continued their upsurge on the Stock Exchange today (Mar 8, 2004) on fresh buying by retailers as well as institutional investors.

PSU stocks remained in the limelight and were quoted sharply higher on sustained buying prompted by the success of the massive public offer of Government's stake in ONGC.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened higher at 5899.26 as against last Friday's (Mar 5, 2004) close of 5880.35 and later rallied smartly rising to a high at 5928.82 before being quoted at 5922.82 at 10.30 hrs (IST).

Brokers said that strong response to the sale of Government stake through equity offerings by six major companies in the primary market has raised investors' confidence in the market.

The net investments of Rs 886 crore by foreign funds in the initial three sessions during last week also bolstered the sentiment.

Retailers and domestic financial institutions were believed to be buyers at early stages of the session.

Besides key PSU counters like HPCL, BHEL, ONGC, MTNL and others including BEML, Dredging Corp, Chennai Petro, Neyveli and EIL were quoted sharply higher on heavy buying.

RIL, Tisco, SBI, L&T, ITC, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and a few others showed marked rises.