Despite being the last day of the current account, share prices firmed up smartly to finish around the day's high. Trading period was extended till 4 pm in view of a technical snag at the fag end.

The BSE sensitive index opened sharply up at 4035.36 and moved further upwards to the intra-day high of 4064.90 before closing at 4042.52 with a net gain of 65.64 points compared to the previous level of 3976.88. The BSE-100 index rose by 23.91 points to 1744.09 from previous close of 1720.28.

Brokers said that bulls entered into heavy commitments enlarging their positions on strong hopes that the conflict in the border region would come to an end following release of K Nachiketa, who was captured by Pakistani troops eight days back, and signs of talks between both the countries to defuse the situation in Kargil. FIIs were reported to have made fresh purchases incyclical stocks like MTNL, Tisco, Telco, Tata Hydro, Wartsila besides Colgate, Castrol, Infosys tech and some others. Of the 149 specified shares, 95 gained substantially while 48 showed moderate falls and six held steady.

SBI remained the most the actively traded scrip with a turnover of Rs 154.10 crore of the total volume of business of Rs 1587.02 crore higher than Rs 1241.72 crore posted yesterday. SBI spurted by Rs 11 to Rs 255.80. Reliance shot up by Rs 6.40 to Rs 184.30, ITC by Rs 26 to Rs 1056, Hindustan Lever by Rs 6.50 to Rs 2276.50, Telco by Rs 11 to Rs 200.50.