Tuesday, September 6 2005 18:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: Discounting the government's decision to hike fuel prices, the Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share Sensex today (Sept 6, 2005) ended at yet another new peak of 7946.78 on sustained inflows from institutional investors.

Operators and retail investors, however, seemed to be bit cautious and booked profits at higher price levels. The benchmark Sensex (sensitive index) opened better at 7931.42 and later moved irregularly in a range of 7976.40 and 7914.41 before ending the day at an all-time high of 7946.78 as against yesterday's close of 7925.24, a net rise of 21.54 points or 0.27 per cent.

The sensex gained by 312.35 points or 4.09 per cent in the six sessions between August 30 and September six. Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) was believed to be making investments in select key counters.

Stepping up activity after a brief slowdown, FIIs and mutual funds have been pumping in fairly heavy funds in equity for the last few days, brokers said, adding: "The sensex is expected to cross the 8,000 level within a week if the inflows continued for the period."

FIIs reported net investments of Rs 1,186 crore and mutual funds made net purchases of Rs 772 crore during last week. The market breadth was negative with the losses outpaced by gains in specified group by 115 to 82.

The government has decided to raise petrol price by Rs 3 a litre and diesel by Rs 2 per litre with effect midnight tonight in line with sky-high crude prices which ruled over USD 66 a barrel during trading period. Institutional investors reportedly made heavy purchases in ITC, SBI, Satyam Computers and Bharti Tele-Venture. The broad-based BSE-100 Index moved up further by 13.14 points to 4254.62 from previous close of 4241.48.The BSE-200 Index and the Dollex-200 were quoted modestly up at 1029.47 and 390.78 at close compared to previous close of 1026.53 and 390.73 respectively.

The BSE-500 Index rose by 8.98 points to 3328.73 from yesterday's close of 3319.75 and the Dollex-30 ended lower at 1487.53 from 1487.57. The volume of business was relatively high at Rs 3250.64 crore from Rs 3138.71 crore yesterday. SBI clocked the highest turnover of Rs 101.58 crore followed by HIN PET (Rs 80.79 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 79.41 crore) and Sterin Bio (Rs 75.41 crore) and RIL (Rs 67.27 crore).

ITC spurted by 37.10 to 1830.25, SBI by 21.00 to 838.35, Bharti-Televenture by 6.50 to 325.05, Cipla by 9.55 to 364.70, Hero Honda by 7.15 to 702.80, Infosys Tech by 8.25 to 2363.95, Satyam Computers by 6.10 to 531.30, ICICI Bank by 3.55 to 487.95 and Grasim by 4.80 to 1281.75.

However, Bajaj Auto dipped by 19.15 to 1468.30, BHEL by 4.45 to 1076.10, Dr Reddy's Lab by 4.10 to 768.90, ONGC by 6.40 to 982.40, Maruti Udyog by 2.40 to 502.65, REL by 3.50 to 580.20, TCS Ltd by 12.75 to 1397.65, RIL by 1.55 to 729.05, L&T by 13.75 to 1311.45, HDFC by 2.95 to 902, ACC by 4.40 to 478.90 and GACL by a rupee to 70.90.