Heavy capital inflows coupled with firm European cues led the Sensex and the Nifty scale new record highs of 26,391 and 7,874, respectively at the closing session on Monday.
The 30-share BSE index Sensex surged 287.73 points to end at 26,390.96 breaching its earlier high of 26,300.17 (intra-day) reached on July 25.
The Sensex touched the day's high of 26,413.11 and low of 26,075.28.
Similarly, the 50-share NSE index Nifty regained the psychological 7,800-level for the first time since July 25 by gaining 82.55 points to close at 7,874.25.
Rajesh Agarwal, Head-Eastern Financiers, said in a report: "With the result season now over, the markets will take cues from important data announcements such as bank loan growth, bank deposit growth and foreign reserves data. The markets will also be impacted to an extent by the macroeconomic developments on the global front. Renewed scuffle in the Middle East and Ukraine continue to remain causes for concern. Investors are expected to remain cautious to some extent as they are trying to gauge the events unfolding in the Middle East and Eastern Ukraine. Overall, we expect markets to maintain an upmove with its fair share of volatility induced by intermittent profit-booking."
Barring FMCG and IT, all other BSE sectoral indices ended significantly in the green. Among them, oil & gas index gained the most by 2.64 per cent, followed by banking 2.36 per cent and capital goods 2.33 per cent, while FMCG index was down 0.44 per cent and IT 0.41 per cent.
ONGC, Cipla, Axis Bank, BHEL and Tata Motors were the major Sensex gainers, while the major losers were ITC, Infosys, HDFC, TCS and Hero MotoCorp.
Meanwhile, Foreign Portfolio Investors bought shares worth Rs 625.18 crore in the previous session, as per provisional data from the stock exchanges.
European stocks rose as Ukrainian and Russian officials met for discussions. The Stoxx 600 rallied 0.9 per cent to 332.78 at 10.03 a.m. in London. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures was up 0.4 per cent, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell below 0.1 per cent.