Thursday, June 29 2006 17:38 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Fag-end selling on concern over the US Federal meeting and also the expiry of June contract today (June 29, 2006) washed out major part of early gains but the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex still managed to close by over 32 points higher at 10,162.16 points.

Taking a cue from firm global trend and also short-covering on the last day of the Futures & Option (F&O) segment, the 30-share sensitive index (Sensex) opened sharply up at 10,193.94 points and surged further to a high of 10,326.05 points, displaying a rise of 206.35 points in the afternoon dealings, dealers said.

However, wary operators and retail investors took the opportunity to book profits at higher levels and the index dipped to a low of 10,109.56 points before ending at 10,162.16points from yesterday's close of 10,129.70 points, a net gain of 0.32 per cent.

On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the S&P CNX Nifty recovered by 16.80 points or 0.56 per cent to end at 2,997.90 points from previous close of 2,981.10 points.

According to market participants, all eyes are now set on the outcome of the upcoming Federal meeting.

Smart rally in RIL, ONGC, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Hero Honda, Grasim, Infosys Tech, Marut, Tata Motors, Wipro, Ranbaxy and BHEL helped the sensex to land in positive terrain at close.

The petro-chem giant and among the top heavyweight, RIL, was in the limelight on news that natural gas reserves in the company's prolific D6 block off the East Coast have nearly doubled to 35.4 trillion cubic feet, making it India's second largest gas-rich block, brokers said. . Another refinery major ONGC was also in keen demand and notched handsome gains on some positive reports.



Meanwhile, in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 48.82 points and 11.59 points respectively last night. Most of the Asian markets also finished firm today.



The volume of business dropped sharply to Rs 2,866.12 crore from Rs 3,623.74 crore yesterday. RIL remained the top traded share with a turnover of Rs 258.77 crore followed by VSNL (Rs 187.75 crore), Reliance Capital (Rs 113.26 crore), Bharti Tele (Rs 105.96 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 101.62 cr).

The broad-based BSE-100 Index moved up by 19.88 points to 5,160.02 from last close of 5,140.14.

The BSE-200 Index and the Dollex-200 were quoted moderately higher at 1,219.80 and 438.53 from previous close of 1215.02 and 435.92 respectively. The BSE-500 Index firmed up by 15.16 points to 3,872.13 from 3,856.97 and the Dollex-30 also improved to 1,801.58 from 1,792.15.

RIL rose by 8.40 to 1009.20, ONGC by 20.45 to 1053.65, Grasim by 32.00 to 1835.05, HDFC by 18.35 to 1069.70, HDFC Bank by 20.05 to 746.85, Hero Honda by 29.95 to 787.50, Tata Motors by 19.60 to 761.45, Maruti by 9.95 to 733.80, Infosys Tech by 20.35 to 2993.10, Ranbaxy by 8.25 to 359.90, Wipro by 12.65 to 496.25 and RCVL by 4.80 to 222.85.



However, L&T dropped by 58.90 to 2128.40, ICICI Bank by 9.20 to 479.60, ACC by 6.10 to 739.95, Bajaj Auto by 55.30 to 2627.25, Bharti Tele by 3.50 to 359.35, Cipla by 2.90 to 209.65, Dr Reddy by 10.90 to 1259.55, Hindalco by 2.35 to 162.50, HLL by 5.45 to 210.80, SBI by 5.75 to 709, Tata Steel by 4.75 to 510.10 and TCS by 13.95 to 1680.