Mumbai: Bolstered by heavy FII inflows and the economic fundamentals, the market today (Nov 30, 2004) soared to the all-time closing high of 6234.29 in fairly brisk activity.

The BSE barometer had almost touched the historic intra-day high of 6249.60 hit on Jan 9, 2004, by rising to 6248.43 during the session.

The Sensex had last closed at the record high of 6194.11 on Jan 14, 2004.

The BSE Benchmark, which generally stayed over 6200-mark throughout, ended the day at 6234.29 as against yesterday's close of 6157.77, a net rise of 76.52 points or 1.24 per cent.

In continued bullish mood, share prices even overcame a brief resistance in the form of profit booking by investors and rallied sharply as the market driver Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) stepped up activity on the bourses.

FIIs remained consistent buyers on bourses even after their record net investments in any calendar year and were believed to be heavy buyers in select index-based stocks.

FIIs reported net purchases of Rs 1178.50 crore in the first three sessions during last week.

Operators were seen selling heavily in a bid to book profits in mid-cap counters.

Infosys Technologies, Ranbaxy, L&T, ONGC, HLL, Hindalco, HDFC, Hero Honda, Bharti Tele-Venture, SBI, ICICI Bank and Wipro stole the limelight on heavy buying support.

Reliance group counters RIL, REL, Reliance Capital and IPCL also recovered smartly on short covering by operators after over a weeklong batterings triggered by differences in Ambani brothers over "ownership issues".