Mumbai: After a brief two-day pause, the market today (Jul 29, 2004) rallied smartly ending up by 50 points at close as investors rolled over fairly good amount of positions in the Futures and Options (F&O) to August contract.

The market was trapped in a narrow range during the major part of the session but witnessed a smart upsurge in the last thirty minutes as Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and operators carried forward part of their positions as July contract of derivatives came to end.

Meanwhile, IDBI Bank scrip was stuck at 20 per cent upper limit of the circuit filter throughout the session following a decision by IDBI this morning to merge the bank with itself.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately higher at 5082.61 and later was trapped in a small range of about 25 points till 3.00 hrs (IST). However, a smart rally later lifted the sensex to end at 5120.45 as against yesterday's (Jul 29, 2004) close of 5070.29, a net rise of 50.16 points or 0.99 per cent.

FIIs, which reported net investments of Rs 188 crore in the initial two sessions of the week, were believed to be heavy buyers in select counters including top heavyweights like RIL and Infosys Technologies.

Encouraged by continued flow of announcements of robust first quarter earnings by major corporates, Operators also were seen enlarging their commitments in several blue chip counters, market players said.

Tisco, SBI, Wipro, ONGC, Dr Reddy's, BHEL, HPCL, ITC, RIL GACL, ICICI Bank and Satyam Computer recorded sharp gains.

HLL, however, fell further due to a 45.7 per cent dip in the company's Q2 net profit.