Friday, January 28 2005 17:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Buoyed by excellent performance by select corporates, the market today (Jan 28, 2005) rallied sharply and ended 180 points up, extending the winning streak to third straight session on the back of across-the-board buying support from institutional investors as well as operators.

This is the biggest single session gain since May 18, 2004, when the Sensex had risen by 371.86 points.

Prompted by better-than-expected third quarter working results announced by State Bank of India (SBI), the sentiment was enlivened further on continued flow of excellent Q3 working as well as low inflation rate.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened moderately higher at 6245.26 and soared to the intra-day high of 6432.58 before ending the day at 6419.09 as against yesterday's close of 6239.43, a net rise of 179.66 points or 2.88 per cent.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which have been net sellers during the new calendar year, were believed to have rolled over positions to the F&O segment while making aggressive purchases at lower levels in the spot market.

Domestic financial institutions and operators too joined the bandwagon and made fresh purchases in many counters.

Contrary to the trend in the banking sector, SBI reported a robust 19.57 per cent growth in net profit at Rs 1099.35 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2004 over Rs 919.44 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal.

Grasim, GNFC, Hind Zinc, Dabur, Sterling Biotech, PNB and some other corporates announced better-than-expected third quarter results during the session.