Fund buying jacks Sensex up by 282 pts

For the first time in the last six months, most of the key indices made substantial gains despite a heavy sell-off by foreign investors in the spot market today.

Even as foreign institutional investors pulled out nearly Rs 440 crore from the Indian spot market today, the Sensex gained nearly 2.44 per cent or 282 points to end at 11,821, less than 100 points away from its all-time high.

The 50-stock Nifty gained even more at 2.71 per cent to leave the psychologically important 2,500-point mark by 18 points behind.

The move up was felt more in large-cap stocks, with most of the buying being reported by Indian mutual funds which bought equity worth nearly Rs 725 crore on Friday and Monday.

Indicating a large-cap bias to today's movement, the BSE 500 gained 2 per cent, but the gains for both the BSE small-cap index and the mid-cap index were lower at 1.12 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively.

Dealers reported high buying interest, both among retail investors and local funds. But buying was across the board except for in metal stocks which had seen considerable appreciation in the last few trading sessions.

The biggest gainer on the Nifty today was Bajaj Auto, which went up 8.51 per cent to Rs 3001.75, followed by tech majors Wipro and TCS, both of which saw their prices go up by 5.52 per cent and 5.4 per cent, respectively.

Satyam Computer Services, too, was not far behind with a 3.96 per cent gain to Rs 860.80.