Mumbai: The Sensex opened moderately higher and later rose past 5800-level during morning trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange today (Oct 8, 2004) on continued buying support from institutional investors and domestic operators.

The BSE Benchmark 30-share Index opened up at 5782.63 as against yesterday's close of 5773.66 and later moved upwards to a high of 5803.82 before being quoted at 5783.36 at 10: 30 am, up by 9.76 points.

Well supported by consistent flow of foreign investments, the market has turned bullish on expectations of excellent corporate results for the second quarter.

The market is being driven by sustained net investments by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), which were net buyers in the first four sessions of the week, despite concerns over rising international crude oil prices.

The market also discounted reports of weak trend on Wall Street last night. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index ended down by 114.52 points and 22.51 points yesterday respectively.

Initially, operators were seen making fresh commitments in blue chip counters on the back of increased FII activity in the past couple of weeks.

Blue chip counters including Tata Steel, Zee Telefilms, Satyam Computer, ONGC, L&T, ITC, Hindalco, Infosys Tech, GACL, Grasim, BHEL and Bharti Tele-Venture were quoted moderately up on fresh buying support.

However, RIL, Tata Motor, SBI and HDFC Bank showed minor losses due to profit booking.