Tuesday, March 21 2006 17:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex today (Mar 21 2006) reached the 11,000 points milestone and also touched an all-time high of 11,017.25 on sustained buying by funds, but lost some ground to close at 10,905.20.

The BSE-30 share Sensitive Index opened slightly better at 10,945.62 as against yesterday's close of 10,941.11 and later shot up to the new intra-trade high of 11,017.25.

Thereafter, the market turned volatile on alternate bouts of buying and selling during the last hour with profit-selling pushing the index to a low of 10,863.61.

Later, it ended at 10,905.20, showing a fall of 0.33 per cent over the previous close.

Dealers attributed initial rally to sustained buying by Foreign Insitutional Investors (FIIs) as well as local funds as an extended reaction to yesterday's statement by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on capital account convertibility by the RBI, which could boost the country's trades, especially exports from special economic zones.

FIIs were net buyers worth Rs 474.90 crore on last Friday while domestic mutual funds also pumped in Rs 460.50 crore on the same day.

IT shares, which were the favourite with investors yesterday, ran out of steam and some of them finished with losses as operators and retail investors took the advantage of the higher prices and indulged in fresh profit-booking.

Meanwhile, brokers described the profit-booking as a sign of healthy market.