Mumbai: Riding piggyback on sustained and heavy FII inflows, the market today (Oct 04, 2004) zoomed past new five-month high to end at 5766.30, extending the price rally to fourth session in a row even as operators and retailers entered into large commitments in several blue chips.

The Sensex, which ended above the May 7 close of 5669.58 on last Friday (Oct 1, 2004), surpassed the closing level of 5757.30 of May 6, 2004, gaining by 304 points in four sessions.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened strong at 5706.32 and gradually moved upwards to the intra-day high of 5785.04 before ending the day at 5766.30 as against last weekend's close of 5675.54, a net rise of 90.76 points or 1.60 per cent.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which reported net investments of Rs 692 crore in the first four sessions last week, reportedly were heavy buyers in key counters including RIL, Wipro, ONGC, REL, Satyam Computers, Maruti Udyog, HPCL, HDFC and GACL.

The market was extremely bullish, influenced by the unexpected 7.4 per cent growth in the GDP in the first quarter of the fiscal and a marginal decline in inflation as well as anticipation of encouraging quarterly corporate results.

In the process, the market has completely set aside worries over the implementation of the turnover tax that came into effect from Oct 1, 2004.

Domestic financial institutions were believed to be booking profits in select counters at the prevailing higher price levels.