Mumbai: The SENSEX opened moderately higher and later improved further on selective rally during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on October 8 on sustained purchases by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).

The BSE benchmark 30-share index opened firm at 4,646.63 as against October 7 close of 4,632.94 and later rose to a high at 4,661.25 before being quoted at 4,652.40 at 10.30 am (IST).

Attributing the overnight resistance to heavy profit booking by operators in heavy weighted counters like RIL, HLL, Infosys Tech and SBI at the higher levels, brokers said though FIIs, which have made net purchases of Rs 356 crore on October 6 continued to pump in funds on Indian bourses, speculators are expected to avail the opportunity to book profits whenever prices soar to new highs.

RIL, HLL, Infosys Tech, SBI, Tisco, BHEL, BSES, Grasim, GACL, HCL Tech, HPCL, ITC, MTNL, Ranbaxy Lab and a few others were quoted remarkably up on fresh buying.

However, L&T suffered a market setback on profit booking.

Among the top gainers, ICI were quoted up by 6.37 per cent, Vijaya Bank by 6.12 per cent, Dredging Corp by 5.65 per cent, Kotak Mahindra by 5.48 per cent, Hind Zinc by 5.09 per cent, STC India by 5.09 per cent, Bata India by 4.18 per cent, Tata Power by 4.14 per cent, Aurobindo Pharma by 3.77 per cent and Titan Ind by 3.72 per cent.

PTI