Continuing with its upward march, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex on Tuesday gathered another 66 points in early trade with funds buying in heavy- weight blue-chip stocks.
The 30-share index, Sensex, which had gained 175 points in the past two sessions, gained 66.27 points at 14,464.16 in the first five minutes of trading on the back of rise in banking, steel, PSUs and auto sector stocks.
Similarly, on the wide-based National Stock Exchange, Nifty was up by 17.75 points at 4,274.30.
Stock brokers said firming trends in other Asian markets influenced the trading sentiments to some extent.
They said excellent quarterly performance along with a liberal bonus shares issue announced by realty firm Unitech Ltd too positively impacted the trading sentiments.
Major gainers, which gave a push to the Sensex were Larsen and Toubro, BHEL, Tata Steel, Infosys Technologies, ICICI Bank and HDFC Ltd.