Tuesday, December 28 2004 17:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Achieving yet another landmark, the benchmark index zoomed up further by 50.45 points to finish at a new historic high of 6563.48 on the stock exchange today (Dec 28, 2004) on sustained buying by foreign funds as well as domestic institutions.

Terming Reliance Industries' announcement at its Monday's board meeting to buyback its shares at Rs 570 as positive, operators and institutional investors went on buying spree, with shares of the company closing smartly higher at Rs 528.10 as against yesterday's close of Rs 516.85.

Elsewhere, metal segment continued to be the star performer and host of shares like Tisco, Hindalco, SAIL, Ispat Ind, Jindal Steel, Jindal Iron and a few others closed with sharp gains on expectation of firm price trend in global market as well as in the domestic market.

Besides RIL and Tisco, select other index-heavyweights like BHEL, Grasim, HDFC Bank, Hindalco, HPCL, ITC, L&T, Satyam Computer and SBI also closed firm, helped the Sensex to end higher.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened slightly better at 6517.90 as against yesterday's close of 6513.03 and soon shot up to an all-time intra-day high of 6568.57 before concluding at 6563.48, up by 0.77 per cent over yesterday's close.

Upsurge in the Sensex could be gauged by sharp to moderate rise in 23 out of 30 index-based scrips.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) continued to be in buying mood and reportedly picked up shares worth Rs 897.80 crore in the last week while local funds also bought shares worth Rs 173.37 crore during the same period.