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Sensex continues upward march

The FIIs bought sizeable amount of ITC, Larsen and Toubro, BSES, MTNL, Castrol India and Tata Tea shares. However, the domestic financial institutions, which extended their to support the capital market during the downslides, started booking profit at higher level, leading brokers said.

With European markets closed for Christmas, FIIs have restricted themselves to marginal buying, brokers said. The market opened with heavy overnight shortcovering which spurted the Sensex. But during the mid-session, local institutions started booking profits at higher level which crashed the Sensex to the day's low, brokers said.

Mirroring the trend, the BSE Sensitive index (30 scrips) opened higher at 3639.98 points, touched day's high of 3676.76 points and the low of 3627.09 points, before closing at 3641.11 points, showing a net gain of 24.77 points as against its previous close of 3616.34 points.

The BSE-100 index finished at 1577.22 points increasing 09.02 points over yesterday's close of 1568.20 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices settled down at 350.97 and 149.18 points as compared to last trading day's close of 349.15 and 148.40 points respectively.

The stock survived a midday retreat and ended higher at the New York market as investors worked to recover last week's losses while heading towards a quieter, holiday-shortened week, leading overseas brokers informed.

The total turnover declined by Rs 110.7 million to Rs 8.2 billion involving 34.1 million shares.

Tobacco giant ITC continued with highest turnover of Rs 2.7 billion followed by SBI Rs 786.2 million, Tata Tea Rs 752.2 million, Castrol Ind Rs 637.2 million, Reliance Rs 534.2 million, MTNL Rs 315.2 million, L&T Rs 237.5 million, Hind Lever Rs 222.2 million, TISCO Rs 188.4 million, ACC Rs 187.4 million, BHEL Rs 148.9 million, TELCO Rs 144.9 million, BSES Rs 133.3 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 104 million and Proc and Gamble Rs 100.6 million in the specified counters.

Good transactions were witnessed at Nicholas Pir, Corporation, Infosys Tech, LML, Indian Oil Company, Reliance Petro, Videsh Sanchar, Satyam Comp, Elgi Equip, National Aluminium and Madras Cements at 'B1' counters.

UNI