Sensex, Nifty ends at record high

Updated at 5.00 pm

MUMBAI: Stock markets continued their upward journey on Monday, with both key indices - Sensex and Nifty -scaling new peaks on the back of sustained FII inflows and robust buying by retail investors in blue-chip shares.

Extending gains to third day in a row, the Bombay Stock Exchange 30-share index ended at an all-time high of 13,399.00, a net rise of 116.09 points or 0.87 per cent over Friday's close of 13,282.91.

The Sensex also hit a new intra-trade peak of 13,410.08, riding on the three-day long bull run.

Similarly, the National Stock Exchange's S&P CNX Nifty touched a new peak of 3,862.05 before ending at a life-time high of 3,858.75, a net rise of 24 points or 0.63 per cent over previous close of 3,834.75.

This time major contributors to the Sensex's jump were power giant NTPC Ltd as well as banking shares such as HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, besides HDFC Ltd and Bharti Airtel.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) reportedly were sustained buyers in front-line stocks for the past few days.

The market continued to draw support from a 8.9 per cent GDP growth in the first quarter of current fiscal, largely driven by manufacturing and services, brokers said.

Investors seemed comfortable that industry is not affected by high oil prices and interest rates, they added.

Heartened by Industrial output, which has maintained the ongoing buoyancy in the economy, FIIs and retail investors made fresh commitments even at the higher levels.

Meanwhile, Asian markets witnessed sluggish trend during the day.

The market breadth remained sharply positive with 1,474 gainers against 1,080 losers in the total 2,626 traded shares.

The trading volume was relatively low at Rs 3,943.08 crore from Rs 4,568.21 crore on Friday.

Shyam Tele clocked the highest turnover of Rs 114.33 crore followed by Jaiprakash Associate (Rs 109.86 crore), Bharti Airtel -- FII block deals (Rs 98.87 crore), Hind Zinc (Rs 92.01 crore) and Reliance Communications (Rs 78.02 crore).

The broad-based BSE-100 Index strenghened further by 54.63 points to 6,809.61 from previous close of 6,754.98.

The BSE-200 Index and the Dollex-200 were quoted sharply up at 1,615.82 and 598.54 at close compared to last weekend's close of 1,601.91 and 597.14 respectively. The BSE-500 Index jumped by 44.49 points to 5,136.75 from last close of 5,092.26 and the Dollex-30 ended higher at 2,447.56 from 2,441.70.

NTPC spurted by 7.40 to 137.95, Infosys Tech by 21.80 to 2160.90, HDFC by 60.10 to 1555.45, HDFC Bank by 10.40 to 1054.60, ICICI Bank by 8.70 to 840.55, BHEL by 22.65 to 2478.80 Dr Reddy's Lab by 6.15 to 795.10, Grasim by 10.20 to 2706.80, Maruti Udyog by 8.25 to 916.05, Reliance Comm by 12.30 to 403.50, SBI by 2.40 to 1137.30, Wipro by 5.50 to 541.95, REL by 13.80 to 534.70, Tata Motor by 15.55 to 833.75, Bharti Airtel by 20.70 to 565.10, ACC by 4.50 to 1019.45, GACL by 5.40 to 136.90 and TCS Ltd by 5.85 to 1074.55.

However, ONGC eased by 7.85 to 871.10, Hindalco by 2.05 to 181.90, Tata Steel by 5.40 to 497.15 and Hero Honda by 10.35 to 715.15.