Tuesday, January 3 2006 17:56 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange's (BSE) benchmark Index (Sensex) today (Jan 3, 2006) zoomed by 149 points and ended at a new closing high of 9539.37 on hectic buying by Foreign Insitutional Investors (FIIs) as well as domestic funds.

The 30-share Sensex opened firm at 9,401.83 as against the previous close of 9390.14 and shot up further to touch a new intra-day high of 9,546.78. Later, it ended at a new closing peak of 9539.37, revealing a whopping 149.23 points or 1.59 per cent over yesterday (Jan 2, 2006).

Finance Minister, P Chidambaram's New Year wish that the country would sustain its seven per cent growth in 2006, also generated good interest buying, brokers said.

Shares from the Midcap segment attracted heavy all-round buying and shot up, which also helped other sectorial indices to rise remarkably, they added.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) which made a good investment of Rs 527 crores on Friday, continued to buy heavily. Domestic funds and operators along with retail investors also made good buying.

BHEL rallied to end at Rs 1411.40 from Rs 1389.15 due to heavy buying spree after a news that the company had bagged a Rs 800 crore order from NALCO to set up tenth succesive unit of the 960 MW (8x120 MW) captive power plant at Angul District of Orissa, brokers said.

Cement shares made good progress on news that most of the cement companies' despatches were higher in the month of December and on expectations of rise in the prices of cement bags. Elsewhere, rise in auto shares was due to increased sales in this sector.