Sensex crosses 11,000 mark first time ever, touches 11,017.25

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 with a gain of 60.39 points over Monday's close of 10,941.

The benchmark index cooled down thereafter and traded below 11,000 mark before rebounding and touching a high of 11,017.25 gaining more than 76 points during the day.

The key index traded at 10,993.59 with a gain of 52 points at 1425 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.

The top gainers on the Sensex this afternoon were BHEL, Cipla, Hero Honda, Reliance, Tata Steel, Grasim Industries, NTPC, SBI, ITC and Bharti.

Sectorwise, BSE indices of Capital Goods, Metal, Oil&Gas, Helath Care, Public Sector Undertakings and FMCG were seeing good gains.

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

The losers on the Sensex this afternoon were Tata Motors, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Wipro, Bajaj Auto, ICICI Bank, Satyam Computers, Maruti, Gujarat Ambuja Cements and Dr Reddy's Lab.

The midcap and smallcap stocks lost early gains, with the BSE midcap index up by 0.26 per cent and the smallcap index up by 0.23 per cent.

Technology, Bank and Automobile company stocks were trading flat with the BSE indices of these sectors in the red this afternoon.

UNI