Mumbai: The Sensex once again opened strong and continued its upward march in line with a fresh stocks rally during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Jan 15, 2004) on sustained buying prompted by expectations of impressive quarterly earnings by corporates.

Investors also continued to make fresh purchases on reports that Union Cabinet, in a meeting to be held this evening, is set to raise the cap on foreign direct investment in banking and telecom sectors to 74 per cent from the existing 49 per cent.

The BSE benchmark 30-share index opened remarkably higher at 6,219.81 as against yesterday's close of 6,194.11 and later spurted to a high at 6,248.81 before being quoted at 6,217.31 at 10.30 hrs (IST).

Investors expected that impressive third quarter growth by corporates, which would announce their results by next week, is likely to result in increased buying support by domestic financial institutions as well as foreign funds.

Besides bank stocks, Tisco, Bharti Televenture, HPCL, ONGC, RIL, Zee Telefilms and a few others were quoted sharply up on fairly heavy buying support.

Among the top gainers, Federal Bank were quoted up by 6.29 per cent, Indo Rama by 6.03 per cent, Concord by 5.91 per cent, ZeeTele by 4.44 per cent, Ramco system by 4.14 per cent, HMT by 4.01 per cent, Exide by 3.63 per cent and Bharti Televenture by 3.49 per cent.