The rally was not restricted to the BSE alone with other exchanges in Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai also scoring huge gains. On the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the S&P CNX Nifty index gained 31.30 points to 1094.20 points from 1062.90 points of the previous day.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) once again dominated the market and continued with their buying spree on major counters which helped boost the market sentiment. FIIs, who have been responsible for the successful run of the Sensex since the last one week, continued from where they left on last Friday. Heavy buying was witnessed on major counters like Telco, Tata Steel and ITC while their domestic counterparts proved to be theparallel runners aptly supporting them.

Market analysts said with capital market worldwide being on an upswing, FIIs are shifting their purchases to India and the trend will continue for quite some time. While software counters witnessed selling, cement and pharma shares were bought heavily. Hectic activity was also witnessed in the shares of banks, pharmaceutical and cyclical companies like steel, petrochemicals and cement.

Said an official with a leading FII, ``buoyancy in the Indian capital market suggests that FIIs are still buying into the market and are not averse to picking up good value stocks and as long as they are buying the positive sentiment will prevail. Buying today was not confined only in the commodity stocks but stretched to pharma counters and other stocks as well. This shows that bargain hunting and value picking is continuing. We should see this happening in the near term."

Mirroring the bullish trend, Sensex leaped to the day's high of 3820.25 points which was also its closingfigure. It had started higher than Friday's close t 3752.79 points and touched the day's low of 3740.49 points. It showed a gain of 112.50 points from its previous close of 3707.75 points. The BSE-100 also recorded smart gains as it opened at 1645.92 points and went on to reach the day's high of 1671.01 points. It touched the day's low of 1643.53 points and finally closed at 1670.14 points to register a gain of 41.73 points.

The buying activity was so strong that it entered in the B group shares jacking up some of the less active shares. Market players were selling shares of the most-traded software shares for profit and diverting the funds to other segments. Several shares are now quoting at the 52-week high level.

The 570-point plus jump in Sensex in the last two weeks has turned the sentiment bullish. This has mostly happened with the sustained buying onslaught by bulls led by foreign investors who scared away bears (who hammer down share prices without holding the shares and later buy when pricesfall). While the plunge from the 3739 level to the 3200 level came after the pull-out of the AIADMK party from the BJP-led coalition government and the subsequent tug-of-war among political parties, the dramatic recovery can be attributed to the passage of Union budget and Finance Bill, encouraging corporate performance, low inflation, higher exports and foreign exchange level and the promises of all parties to carry forward the reform process.

HK stocks hit

SINGAPORE:
Hong Kong stocks were volatile today as investors sold China-related shares on concerns about anti-NATO protests, but many other Asian market ignored the growing row.

The markets worst hit by Friday's NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which killed four people, were the Shanghai B Index, down 5.43 per cent at 28.687, and China's Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In Shenzen the hard currency B Share Index slumped 4.24 per cent to 54.80, while the A Share Index was down 2.66 per cent at 350.58.