Sensex crosses 6600
By Our Market Bureau | 01 Jan 2005
Mumbai: The stock markets ended on a bullish note yesterday with the BSE sensex crossing another milestone of 6,600. The undertone of the market remained bullish, with an 80-point rise of the BSE sensex, which closed at 6,602.69 and a 20.7-point gain for the S&P CNX Nifty which closed at 2,080.50.
Looking back at 2004, the upward move maintained from January was halted for some time in May, but the heavy inflows from FIIs kept the undertone bullish for the larger part of the year.
FIIs pumped $8.51 billion (Rs38,965 crore) into the equity market during the year compared to $6.59 billion (Rs30,458 crore) during the previous year.
Large-sized IPOs like TCS and NTPC hit the primary market for the first time ever, validating the existence of a huge appetite for big issues, with most of them providing good returns on listing too.
Even though the benchmark indices did not gain much in 2004, the most distinctive feature during the year was the attraction that mid-cap and small cap stocks held for investors, mainly due to the lowering of short-term capital gains tax and introduction of zero long term capital gains tax.