Nifty forges ahead, touches fresh peak at 10,043

Mumbai: The benchmark Nifty today climbed to a fresh high of 10,043 and the Sensex surged over 133 points in the opening session, underpinned by a strong dose of better-than-expected corporate earnings.

The rally came on buying in capital goods, metal, oil and gas, consumer durables and banking stocks.

L&T, the engineering and construction conglomerate, rose 3.97 per cent after the company on Friday reported better- than-estimated earnings for the first quarter with a 50.59 per cent jump in consolidated net profit, which in turn helped the NSE index.

The 50-share NSE Nifty surged 28.80 points, or 0.28 per cent, to scale a life high of 10,043.30, breaking its previous intra-day record 10,026.05 hit on July 28.

The 30-share Sensex too was on song, rising 133.05 points, or 0.41 per cent, at 32,442.93. The gauge had lost 73.42 points in the previous session on Friday.

Sectoral indices, led by capital goods and metal, registered gains of up to 1.79 per cent.

Other big movers were ONGC, Kotak Bank, Tata Steel, PowerGrid and ICICI Bank.

Continued buying by domestic institutional investors (DIIs) and encouraging quarterly numbers from a few blue-chip companies made it a perfect setting, traders said.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite rose firmed up. Japan's Nikkei, however, fell.

The US Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.15 per cent higher on Friday.