Mumbai: After opening on a cautious note, the Sensex later recovered and continued its rally on the back of selective stocks upsurge during morning trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (Oct 5, 2004) on heavy FII inflows.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened lower at 5760.19 as against yesterday's close of 5766.30 but later turned better and rose to a high of 5786.54 before being quoted at 5778.52 at 10:30 am, up by 12.22 points.

The market is being driven by increased FII activity in the past few days. Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) reported net investments of Rs 243 crore last Friday, taking the total net purchases to Rs 935 crore during last week.

Cement, Auto and refinery sectors attracted fairly heavy buying support. ACC, Grasim, GACL, Birla Corp, MUL, Tata Motor, HPCL, BPCL, IOC, IBP and Chennai Petro were quoted remarkably higher.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index yesterday closed higher by 23.89 points and 10.20 points respectively.

While, the South-east Asian markets witnessed a weak trend during the morning trading.

Among the top gainers, Welspun Gujarat were quoted up by 6.49 per cent, Ramco Sys by 5.12 per cent, Chennai Petro by 3.39 per cent, Maha Seamless by 3.35 per cent, TCS by 3.10 per cent, SCI by 2.98 per cent, IOC by 2.85 per cent and Hinduja TMT by 2.79 per cent.

However, CESC, HDFC, Torrent Ph, Crompton Gr, Hero Honda, JB Chemical, Cadila Hosp and Satyam were quoted moderately lower on profit booking.