Mumbai, Nov. 26: Rounding off an eventful week in style, frontline stocks closed at new highs in a special trading session on Saturday.

The sensex, which is the pulse of the stock market, pierced the 8900-mark to reach a new intra-day peak of 8912.12, before ending at a historic high of 8889.03 as investors continued to remain bullish.

Starting from where it ended yesterday, the bellwether index opened firm at 8858.20 and continued to rally before profit-taking set in, paring some of the gains. However, it still managed to close at a new high of 8889.03, showing a gain of 35.82 points or 0.40 per cent over the previous close of 8853.21. With today’s gain, the index has shot up by 354.06 points in just four sessions.

Market participants, led by foreign institutional investors (FIIs), have been channelling funds into equities, inspired by robust fundamentals of the economy. Moreover, worries over high crude prices and rising interest rates have also ebbed in recent times, accelerating the buying interest.

Foreign institutional investors, who have been mostly buyers this month, made net purchases to the tune of Rs 461 crore ($103 million) on Friday and they have bought shares of over Rs 3338 crore during the month. Brokers expect foreign investors to pump in more money in the next calendar year.

In the current year, foreign investors have made a net purchase of $8.5 billion, the highest in any calendar year.

In today’s trading, barring the BSE FMCG index and the banking index, all other indices finished in the green. The highest percentage gainer was the BSE capital goods index that ended at 5460.29, a gain of around 167 points. The major index-based gainers, which helped in the sensex surge were Larsen & Toubro, Bhel, Hero Honda, ONGC, Ranbaxy, ACC and SBI.

While the buoyancy in the L&T counter was on account of hopes that it would gain the most in a strong economy, analysts felt ONGC ended in the positive territory because of reports that it has joined hands with a Chinese oil company for Syrian oilfields. While L&T rose by Rs 45.45 to Rs 1689.25, ONGC shot up by Rs 10.40 to Rs 1030.15.

Gold shines

Gold maintained its record-breaking stride and rose further to close at a new high of Rs 7,415 on the bullion market here today due to seasonal buying by stockists along with firm global advices.