At a historic high, it''s a terrific Tuesday for the Sensex

Mumbai: Bulls extended their merry run over the markets on Tuesday, focusing on a narrow range of heavyweight pivotals, and powered the BSE Sensex to close at an all-time high of 6,234.29 points, up 76.52 points (or 1.24 per cent).

In the course of the trading session, the Sensex touched an intra-day high of 6,248.43 points, marginally short of the all-time intra-day high of 6,249.6 touched on January 9, 2004.

Fuelled by FII flows and large-cap trading focus, the markets also shrugged of the impact of the Reliance ownership tussle. Both Reliance Industries and Reliance Energy ended the day on a higher note for the second successive day.

But brokers warned that the narrow focus of the trades showed that retail investors, including high net worth individuals, were not participating in the rally.

Unlike the broad-based buying seen on Monday's trading though, the mid-cap stocks took a tumble during the day's trading. With the exception of the BSE - IT Index, practically all indices under-performed the Sensex during the day's trading. The BSE - IT Index, appreciating by 1.89 per cent, was the lone out-performer. Infosys Technologies, Ranbaxy, L&T, ONGC, HLL, Hindalco, HDFC, Heroi Honda, Bharti Tele-Venture, SBI, ICICI Bank and Wipro stole the limelight on heavy buying support.

The Nifty gained 19.15 points to close at 1,958.80, an appreciation of 0.99 per cent.

With everybody's mind and eye on the Reliance group, courtesy their 'ownership issue' debate, the Reliance group shares provided some relief with a decent showing. Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd. was the only one that slipped a little, down Rs0.60 to close at Rs73.95, while the others continued their positive trend from Monday. Reliance Industries Ltd. gained Rs6.95 to close at Rs516.75, while Reliance Energy made gains of Rs5.35 and ended the trade at Rs560.65. Reliance Capital registered a gain of Rs1.55, to close at Rs138.80.

Volumes were also encouraging, with 40.95 crore shares, valued at Rs5,803.99, traded at the NSE on Tuesday. At the BSE, 27.33 crore shares worth Rs2,346.21 crore were traded.

The market driver quite obviously have been the foreign institutional investors who have remained consistent buyers on the bourses, even after made record net investments here, in any calendar year. They are believed to be heavy buyers in select index-based stocks. The FIIs have already made net purchases of Rs1178.50 crore in the first three sessions during last week. But now, with the FIIs at their year end buying spree, analysts are divided over the actual market sentiment, with a section advising caution at these levels, whilst others are advising profit booking on a scrip-to-scrip basis.