Led by Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), equities bounced back with a vengeance lifting the sensex past the 3300-mark at close in fairly good activity on the stock exchange on Thursday on all-round heavy purchases by Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).A steep upsurge in the sensex could be gauged by a sharp to moderate rise in other index-based counters like Infosys Tech, Satyam Computer, State Bank of India, Bhel, Reliance, HPCL, ICICI Bank, ITC, L&T, MTNL, Telco, Tisco, Zee Telefilms, Bajaj Auto and ACC.After a weak start at 3253.14, the BSE benchmark 30-share index later recovered its losses and rallied smartly to the intra-day high at 3311.18 before ending at 3305.44 as against Wednesday’s close of 3256.08, netting a sharp rise of 49.36 points or 1.52 per cent.The broad-based BSE-100 index also firmed up by 20.02 points to 1635.52 from previous close of 1615.50. FIIs, which have been making net investments for the past several days and have made net purchases of Rs 171 crore in the first two sessions of the current week, reportedly bought shares of index-based counters attracting operators to make fresh commitments. The market discounted a moderate setback on Wall Street on Wednesday and growing concern over the threat of the US-led war against Iraq.After two days of battering, IT Bellwether, Infosys Tech led the rally in IT segment on good buying support from FIIs as well as speculators. In the specified group, 131 including 21 index-based scrips registered sharp to moderate gains while 64 others ended with losses.The BSE-200 index and the dollex-200 were quoted sharply up at 389.90 and 136.01 at close compared with previous close of 385.17 and 134.27 respectively. The BSE-500 index firmed up by 13.51 points to 1164.47 from Wednesday’s close of 1150.96 and the dollex-30 finished up at 568.57 from 559.72.The volume of business was relatively low at Rs 1265.56 crore from Rs 1198.63 crore on Wednesday. Digital global remained the top traded counter with the highest turnover of Rs 130.88 crore followed by Infosys Tech (Rs 121.10 crore), Mastek (Rs 120.73 crore), Satyam Computer (Rs 98.71 crore) and SBI (Rs 95.93 crore). HLL spurted by 4.55 to 167.70, SBI by 12.95 to 306.40, Bhel by 9.20 to 204.45, Infosys Tech by 112.65 to 4524.20, Satyam Computer by 6.00 to 226.20 and Bajaj Auto by 14.45 to 550.
