Thursday, November 24 2005 18:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Sensex today (Nov 24, 2005) rallied further by 105.70 points to end at its second highest closing level of 8744.04 points on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) here today on increased buying activity by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).

The highest ever closing for the index was 8799.96 points recorded on October four and the record intra-day high of 8821.84 was touched on October five.

The sensex opened strong at 8655.14 as against 8638.34 yesterday and rose further sharply to a intra-day high of 8765.71, before finishing at 8744.04, showing a steep rally of 1.22 per cent over the previous close.

Active buying by FIIs during the current month with a net purchase of Rs 2565.50 crore cheered up the market sentiment, brokers said.

Apart from heavy FII buying, good purchases by operators in the Futures and Options (F&O) segment on the last day of the November contract also boosted the market sentiment.

RIL continued to rise sharply after yesterday's Standard & Poor's upgradation of RIL's rating by 2 notches to BBB from BB-plus and gained further by Rs 12.30 to end at Rs 844.35.

Positive global advices and fall in world crude oil prices to $58.65 per barrel also partly aided the uptrend.

Elsewhere, shares from the cement and FMCG sectors were also in the limelight on hectic buying.

Major gainers which helped the index to rally were Grasim, HDFC, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), L&T, Infosys Tech, ACC, State Bank of India (SBI), Bharti, Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), ITC, ONGC, Cipla, ICICI Bank, TCS, Wipro and Tata Motors.