Thaindian News

Mumbai, Sep 21 (IANS) The surge in Indian equities market continued Tuesday, lifting a key index above the psychologically-important level of 20,000-point mark for the first time in 32 months as foreign funds continued to pump in big dollars.
Soon after the opening bell at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the 30-share sensitive index (Sensex) shot up to 20,088.96 points, the highest in 32 months. This was for the first time since Jan 17, 2008, the index breached the 20,000-point mark.

Profit taking thereafter resulted in some steady losses for the index, which fell to the day’s low of 19,860.88 points some two hours into trading. Then began a rally, taking the index to 19,993.01 points.

At this level, the barometer index was up 86.91 points, or 0.44 percent, against the previous close at 19,906.10 points.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the 50-share S&P CNX Nifty, breached at 6,000-point mark and was at ruling at 6005.45 points, with a gain of 25 points, or 0.42 prcent.

Monday had seen the Sensex gain 311.35 points or 1.59 percent at 19,906.1 points over the previous close at 19,594.75 points, with foreign funds pouring in $373.25 million into the markets.

In the current month, these funds have invested over $3 billion in the Indian equities market, taking their net buying of equities to $11.59 billion in the current calendar year, data with the markets watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India showed.

Despite the overall gains, the number of Sensex shares that were in the red and green respectively, were evenly matched at 15 scrips each, with Tata power the top gainer, up 2.93 percent at Rs.1,310, while ITC lost the most ground, down 2.58 percent at Rs.172.

Information technology stocks were the flavour of the day, while consumer goods scrips lost ground as per data on the 13 sector-specific indices of the exchange.