Monday, July 25 2005 18:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The bull charge at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) was virtually unstoppable today (July 25, 2005), with the Sensex breaching the crucial 7500-mark and touching a fresh lifetime closing peak of 7505.60, driven up by sustained FII buying coupled with short covering by operators.

Buying was at its peak when the benchmark touched the historic high of 7526.88 during intra-day deals, buoyed partly by the Centre's nod to double the investment limit of profit-making public sector units.

The BSE benchmark 30 share index opened moderately higher at 7427.65 and later surged up to end the day at 7505.60 as against last Friday's close of 7423.25, a net rise of 82.35 points or 1.11 per cent.

Barring a few corrective movements, the dream-run at the BSE displayed a massive gain of 312 points or 4.33 per cent in July so far.

The Sensex had earlier scaled the lifetime intra-trade high of 7429.95 and an all-time closing peak of 7423.25 in a strong 119-point rally on July 23.

FIIs, which reported net investments of Rs 1,374.20 crore in the first four trading sessions of last week, were believed to be heavy buyers in blue chip counters.

The sentiment was enlivened by the flow of excellent quarterly working results by some major corporates as well as reports of good rainfall across the country.

The market seemed to have totally discounted a warning by Finance Minister P Chidambaram to investors against getting carried away by the booming stock markets.

The union cabinet today gave its assent to double the investment limit of profit-making PSUs, for which prior approval of the government is not required.

Banking stocks hogged the limelight with key counters like SBI, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank posting hefty gains.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index spurted by 42.97 points to 4027.53 from previous close of 3984.56 The volume of business improved to Rs 3243.73 crore from Rs 2978.69 crore last Friday. VSNL clocked highest turnover of Rs 127.81 crore followed by RIL (Rs 115.62 crore), Reliance capital (Rs 113.08 crore), SBI (Rs 84.38 crore) and India Bulls (Rs 62.52 crore).

The BSE-200 Index and the Dollex-200 were quoted sharply up at 976.11 and 373.59 at close compared to last weekend's close of 966.50 and 370.85 respectively. The BSE-500 Index rose by 28.53 points to 3123.83 from previous close of 3095.30 and the Dollex-30 ended higher at 1416.57 from 1404.58