Friday, February 4 2005 11:15 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Extending its yesterday's (Feb 03, 2005) steep rally, the Sensex started the day on a promising note and rose further at the opening session on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Fen 04, 2005) due to increased buying activity with blue chip counters showing remarkable gains.

The 30-share sensitive index opened firm at 6635.85 as against yesterday's close of 6619.97 and continued to rise smartly and after touching a session's high of 6684.16, eased marginally and was quoted at 6666.00 at 10:30 hrs (IST), revealing a sharp rally of 46.03 points over yesterday's close.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) continued to pump in funds in the market with heavy buying activity, dealers said and added FIIs, which made a remarkable Rs 1374.00 crore buying yesterday, had bought shares worth a whopping Rs 3089.70 crores since Monday (Jan 31, 2005).

The major gainers during early trade were HPCL, Bharti, HLL, SBI, Tata Motors, M&M, Tata Steel, Wipro, ICICI Bank, Reliance, ITC, India Cement, Sesa Goa and ACC, which were quoted sharply higher than yesterday's close.