E-Paper
Sensex closes at new peak of 10,803.71
Sustained buying by foreign and domestic funds helped the Sensex to end 39 pts up.
Sustained buying by foreign and domestic funds on Monday helped the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex post gains for the third straight session and end 39 points up at a new closing peak of 10,803.71, despite profit booking at higher price levels.
Concerns over advance tax flows exerting pressure on liquidity notwithstanding, the 30-share Sensitive Index (Sensex) also hit a new intra-trade record high of 10,884.48.
The Sensex, however, met with fairly strong resistance and dropped to the day's low of 10,782.53 before ending the day at 10,803.71 against Friday's close of 10,765.16, a net gain of 38.55 points or 0.36 per cent.
Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) as well as Mutual Funds were believed to be consistent buyers in equity after a massive hedging of portfolios in the futures last week.
Operators and retail investors booked profits at higher price levels, adopting a cautious approach in view of concerns that the stock market could witness liquidity crunch during mid-March owing to the advance tax flows.
Operators' cautious stance was attributed to a statement by the Reserve Bank India Governor YV Reddy last weekend that liquidity could face "some pressure" in the middle of March owing to advance tax flows.
Meanwhile, FIIs reported inflows of Rs 1,095 crore in equity in the first four days of last week while mutual funds made net purchases of Rs 864 crore in the same period.
Reliance Communications Ventures Ltd (RCoVL) once again hogged the limelight and was quoted sharply up in brisk activity prompted by the company's decision to merge Reliance Infocomm Ltd in itself.
