Sensex soars to close at new high of 10,244.05

The Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex on Thursday continued its record-breaking stride and hit yet another intra-day life-time peak of 10,304.88 points, before ending at a new historic high of 10,244.05 on sustained heavy buying by both foreign funds and operators.

The 30-share sensitive index started the day on a promising note at 10,268.51 as against yesterday's close of 10,224.32 and shot up to a record high of 10,304.88.

Thereafter, it fell back steeply towards the fag-end following fall in select index-heavyweights and finished at 10,244.05, still the highest ever closing and showed a rise of 19.73 points or 0.19 per cent over Wednesday.

FIIs continued their buying spree and made a handsome net investment of Rs 586.10 crores on February 20 and Rs 125.30 crores on February 21, taking the total investment in the current week (till February 21) to Rs 711.40 crore and in the month to a whopping Rs 5,023.40 crores.

Meanwhile, volume in the cash market has been falling steadily in the last couple of days as big players were hesitant to enter into the market in big way ahead of the Union Budget to be presented in Parliament on February 28, brokers said.

Smart rise in shares in select segments like FMCG and Metal helped the index to close at record high. However, the early gains in sensex was pared due to fall in shares from Capital Goods, Bank and Consumer Durable, they added.

Leading the pack of gainers were HLL, Tata Steel, NTPC, ONGC, ITC, Wipro, Satyam Computer, Bajaj Auto, Hero Honda, TCS, Bharti Tele and Dr Reddy.