Sensex, Nifty touch new highs; bank stocks soar

Positive global and domestic cues led the two major indices of the Indian equities markets to scale highs in Tuesday's trade session.

Bullish sentiments prevailed a day after US and India reaffirmed to take the economic partnership further and announced key initiatives. Last week's ECB bond buying programme too had a positive effect on the markets.

The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the S&P Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) touched a new high of 29,618.59 points in the intra-day trade Tuesday -- surpassing its previous high of 29,408.73 points touched on Jan 23.

The Sensex closed the day's trade up 292.20 points or one percent at 29,571.04 points.

The wider 50-scrip Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) too scaled a new high in the day's trade. It touched 8,925.05 points during the day's trade surpassing its previous record of 8,866.40 points reached on Jan 23.

It closed higher by 74.90 points or 0.85 percent at 8,910.50 points.

On BSE, healthy buying was observed in banking, capital goods and automobile stocks, while information technology (IT), technology, entertainment and media (TECK) and metal scrip came under selling pressure.

The S&P BSE Bank index was up 527.76 points, followed by capital goods index which rose 312.95 points and automobile index which gained 249 points.

However, IT index was down 186.02 points, TECK index was lower by 66.28 points and metal index slipped by 62.97 points.