Wednesday, June 8 2005 18:15 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex today (Jun 8, 2005) shot up by another 77 points, as buoyant trend gathered momentum on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on the back of heavy purchases by local funds as well as Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).

After opening weak at 6768.20, the BSE Benchmark 30-share Index bounced back breaching the 6800-mark during morning trading and later fluctuated in a range of 6862.83 and 6768.20 before ending the day at 6858.24 against yesterday's (Jun 7, 2005) close of 6781.25, a net rise of 76.99 points or 1.14 per cent.

Bank and IT sector led the price rally on fairly heavy purchases by institutional investors.

Crediting continued upsurge in bank shares to strong expectations of speedy reforms in the sector following the green signal by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to banks for funding corporates for overseas acquisitions. IT counters too attracted keen demand.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) were believed to have stepped up purchases after a brief slowdown in inflows. FIIs reported net investments of Rs 87.70 crore on Monday (Jun 6, 2005).

Easing crude prices that fell further following OPEC's comments suggesting an increase in crude production output and anticipated rising investories in the United States.

Domestic funds were believed to be continued buyers in select heavy weighted counters as also mid-cap shares.

SBI, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank and Allahabad Bank recorded marked gains.

RIL, REL, ITC, HDFC, Grasim including IT shares like TCS Ltd, Satyam Computers and Infosys Technologies also scored impressive gains.