MUMBAI, MAY 11: Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continued their aggressive purchases on the Indian stock markets for the tenth consecutive session on Tuesday. With buyers swamping the markets, the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive index (Sensex) jumped by another 80 points and crossed the psychological barrier of 3900 mark.With this, Sensex has registered a whopping gain of 645.22 points during last ten sessions. Sensex was quoted at 3245.27 on April 26 and thereafter, the index has gone up continuously in the next ten trading sessions till today posting handsome gains. ``The current rally is driven by FIIs. Indian operators are yet to figure out what is happening,'' said a fund manager.After a long time, index-based scrips like Reliance, Apollo Tyre, Bayer India, Bom Dyeing, BPL, Siemens, Century Textiles, Indo Gulf Fertilizer, Crompton Greaves and ITC Bhadra witnessed hectic buying by FIIs and hit upward circuit filters at the BSE. ``With the bull rally gathering momentum, Sensex may cross the4,000 level within a day,'' said a broker.The 30-share Sensex opened at 3854.16 points, touched the day's high of 3915.25 points, a low of 3847.53 points before closing at 3900.49 points, showing a net gain of 80.24 points as against the previous close of 3820.25 points. The broad-based BSE-100 index advanced further by 34.81 points to 1704.95 points against yesterday's close of 1670.14 points.Share prices also rose at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on heavy buying by FIIs which lifted the S&P CNX Nifty index up by 21.80 points to 1116.00 points from the previous close of 1094.20 points. Other stock exchanges in Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai also showed good gains.Infotech, pharma and fast-moving consumer goods stocks witnessed a mixed trend, dealers said. Domestic institutional investors like Unit Trust of India and others reportedly pressed sales in some counters. However, FIIs and local operators picked up whatever shares offered by institutions. While FIIs had been actively buying cyclicalshares, including cement and pharma, for the past few days, they shifted their purchases to auto and other transnational scrips. Software scrips, which were ignored yesterday by FIIs, also attracted their attention. Domestic investors followed the FII pattern of investment.The Reliance stock touched the upper circuit today at Rs 166.10 with the bull grip on the scrip still continuing. The scrip has been in the limelight after the company increased prices of its products. SBI also shot up to touch the upper circuit at Rs 214.90. "The rise both RIL and SBI is also an indicator to the fact that speculative activity has picked up now compared to last week when most of the tarding was delivery based,'' said a fund manager.
