Wednesday, April 5 2006 18:38 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Benchmark 30-share Index (Sensex) today (Apr 05, 2006) extended its rally to third straight day, rising by a hefty 109 points to one more closing peak of 11,746.90 points, driven by mind-blowing fund inflows into equity.

The Sensex has gained 467 points or 4.14 per cent in the last three days and completed its thousand-point journey in just 18 days. It had ended the day at 10,573.54 on March 9.

The stock market disregarded a required correction and continued its upward march, following unabated and heavy buying support from domestic mutual funds, which were believed to be aggressive buyers during the day.

The Sensex opened strong at 11,671.14 points and generally moved upwards to an all-time intra-trade high of 11,755.20 points before ending the day at a new closing peak of 11,746.90 points against last close of 11,638.01 points, a net rise of 108.89 points or 0.94 per cent.

The sentiment was boosted by high hopes of impressive fourth quarter results.

Institutional purchases were more aggressive in small-cap and mid-cap segments.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), however, seemed to have slowed down inflows. FIIs pumped in Rs 477.90 crore in equity on April 3 while mutual funds reported net purchases Rs 214 crore on the same day.

Blue chip stocks like L&T, BHEL, Bajaj Auto, HDFC Bank, SBI, ICICI Bank, Grasim, Cipla, ACC, HLL and Ranbaxy were the day's bright spots.