Wednesday, January 4 2006 14:09 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Continuing it's record breaking spree, the Sensex once again logged a new high of 9642.31 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) at mid-session today (Jan 4, 2006) following sustained hectic buying by Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) and retail investors amid firm global trends.

Despite initial hesitancy after the benchmak index opened soft at 9523.29, strong buying from FIIs and others drove it to new peaks of 9642.31 before light profit-taking pushed it mildly lower to 9624,21 at 1315 hours, still up by a whopping 84.84 points.

FII were reported to have picked up shares worth Rs 477.70 crore on January two, continued to lend support in most of the segments on hopes of excellent third quarter corporte earnings early next week.

Mid-cap and small-cap shares remained in keen demand on good buying support from operators as well as retail investors.

Positive global advices also partly boosted the market sentiment. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index ended sharply higher by 129.91 points and 38.42 points respectively yesterday (Jan 3, 2006).

South East Asian markets also showed firm trends in the course of today's business.

Among index-based counters, Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Infosys Tech, ITC, Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL), ICICI Bank, Larsen and Turbo (L&T), NTPC, Satyam Computer, State Bank of India (SBI), Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, Bajaj Auto, Dr Reddy, Cipla, HDFC and HDFC Bank were quoted remarkably higher.