Wednesday, January 25 2006 11:22 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Despite fairly heavy Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) pull out,the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) today (Jan 25,2006) rallied by another over 100 points in early trade on hectic short covering at the concluding day of January contract in derivatives.

Operators and retail investors were seen covering their short positions in a bid to make a smooth rollover to the next futures contract.

The Sensex opened sharply up at 9,580.30 against yesterday's (Jan 24,2006)close of 9,549.92 and later surged up to a high of 9,654.55 before being quoted at 9,635.79 at 10.30 am, up by 85.87 points over last close.

FII however, reported net sales of Rs 318 crore in Cash segment and also wound up positions amounting to over Rs 775 crore in Futures on Monday.

Despite negative activity by institutional investors, market players were making heavy purchases in futures to cover short positions, brokers said.

The market sentiment was well supported by a strong global trend and higher GDP growth projections by the Reserve Bank of India in its third quarter review of the monetary policy released yesterday.

The apex bank has revised upwards the GDP growth projections to 7.5-8 per cent for this fiscal while keeping the bank rate unchanged at six per cent.

In the Asian markets, the Nikkei was quoted up by 146 points, the Hang Seng by 16.61 per cent, the Taiwan index by 83 points and the Kospi by 21.22 points in early trade.