Wednesday, December 22 2004 11:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex touched new historic high of 6471.77 immediately after resumption of trading during the morning session on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Dec 22, 2004), as operators continued buying spree on the back of positive advices from Wall Street despite moderate selling by foreign funds on Monday.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened firm at 6465.51, piercing through its previous intra-day high of 6461.64 attained yesterday, and moved irregularly in a range between 6471.77 and 6446.09 before being quoted at 6461.59 at 10.30 AM, up by 10.29 points.

Textile shares like Arvind Mills, Raymond Mill, Indorama Synthetics and few others were in limelight on fresh buying support from investors on reports that cotton prices might fall as the crop was quite good during the year, dealers said.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), the main driving force behind the current rally and who were net heavy buyers in recent months, seemed to have slowed down their activities and sold shares worth Rs 49.60 crore on Monday.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index shot up by 97.83 points and 23.06 points respectively last night.

Index-based shares like Bajaj Auto, Bharti Tele, Dr Reddy, HDFC Bank, Hindalco, HPCL, Ranbaxy, Satyam Computer, SBI, Tata Motors, Tisco, and Wipro showed marked to moderate gains on some buying support.

However, BHEL, Grasim, HDFC, Hero Honda, ITC, LNT, ONGC, Tata Power and Zee Tele were quoted moderately lower.