Sensex crosses 11,000 mark first time ever

Mumbai, Mar 21: The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive Index (Sensex) crossed the 11,000 mark first time ever in the morning trade, touching 11,001.50 points with a gain of 60.39 points over Monday's close of 10,941 points.

The benchmark index cooled down thereafter and traded at 10,976 with a gain of 35 points at 1110 hrs.

Sensex took 31 trading sessions to cross over the 11,000 mark after it had crossed the 10,000 mark on February six.

With the 11,000 mark, BSE Sensex has joined the exclusive club of the leading world market indices like Dow Jones (USA), Nikkei (Japan) and Hang Seng (Hong Kong) that trade above 11,000 mark.

Sensex will consolidate around 11,000 and today's landmark was reached on the back of all-round rally in the market, the foreign fund support and enough liquidity was driving the bull run, said BSE broker Madhukar Sheth. Markets will not go below 10,000 mark even if there is a severe downtrend, he said.

Commodity-wise sugar, steel and cement companies were leading the bull run and were expected to perform well even in future, he added.

Technically, the Sensex heavyweights like SBI, Hindustan Lever, Bharti Tele, Reliance Industries and ONGC gained between 1.04 per cent to 0.70 per cent this morning, which pushed the Sensex closer to 11,000 mark.

Also there were the top gainers, which helped the Sensex cross over the 11,000 mark, like BHEL, Cipla, Hero Honda, NTPC, Ranbaxy, Reliance Energy, Tata Power, Hindalco, Grasim Industries, Tata Steel, all gaining between three per cent to two per cent.

The bull run in the capital goods, health care, public sector undertakings and metal sectors each gaining by more than a per cent this morning also saw Sensex cross over the 11,000 mark.

Earlier in the opening move, Sensex opened strong at 10,945.62 points as compared to the last close of 10,941.11 points.

The losers on the Sensex this morning were HDFC, HDFC Bank, Infosys Technologies, Wipro, Satyam Computers, Tata Motors and TCS.

The midcap and smallcap stocks, too, joined the bull run to 11,000, with the BSE Midcap index up by 0.77 per cent and the smallcap up by 0.70 per cent.

UNI