Mumbai: Continuing its upward march, the Sensex opened moderately higher and rose to a near historic peak of 6386.29 during morning trading on the Stock Exchange in Mumbai (BSE) today (Dec 15, 2004) on sustained buying support from investors.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened up at 6334.27 as against yesterday's (Dec 14, 2004) close of 6325.53 and later spurted to a high of 6379.54, a few points away from the historic high of 6386.29 touched on December 6, before being quoted at 6373.47 at 10.30 hrs (IST), up 47.94 points.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the S&P CNX Nifty also remained at its all-time high and was quoted at 2023.35 at 10.30 hrs (IST).

Operators and retail investors were seen making fresh commitments in mid-cap stocks from cash group on the back of consistent net investments by Foreign Institutional Investors, which reported net purchases of Rs 199.70 crore on Monday.

The market is in an upbeat mood and the Sensex is all set to breach all previous records during the day.

Software stocks were in the forefront on fairly heavy buying support. IT majors like Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Satyam Computers were quoted substantially higher.

Auto counters too remained in the limelight on sustained purchases by investors. Tata Motors, Maruti Udyog, Hero Honda and Bajaj Auto showed sharp gains at early stages.

Besides, L&T, Bharti Tele-Venture, BHEL, Dr Reddy's, HLL, L&T and ITC were quoted remarkably up.