Mumbai, Nov 5: The stock benchmark crossed 21,000 in the early part of the special Diwali trading session on Friday. The Sensex was at  21,055.62, up 162 points.
 On the NSE, the Nifty was up 44 points at 6,325.75. The Sensex regained 21,000 and Nifty 6,300 for the first time since January 10, 2008.
 The Indian markets have been among the top performers across the world. Despite the good run, analysts remain upbeat. “We may also see good inflows over the next year. I expect capital goods sector to be in focus over the next year,” said A Balasubramanian, CEO of Birla SunLife AMC.
 The buying activity was broad-based with all the sectoral indices on the BSE remaining in the positive.  Among the Sensex stocks, JP Associates was up over 4 per cent while Hindalco and M&M was trading with nearly 2 per cent gains.
 Global markets were mixed on Friday. US stocks were headed for a lower open ahead of a monthly report on unemployment, which has remained stubbornly high despite other bright spots in the economy. The European markets were slightly lower while most Asian markets closed higher.
 Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 24, or 0.2 perc ent, to 11,363.
 The strong gains in Asia’s markets came after U.S. shares closed at their highest level since just before Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.

Lastupdate on : Fri, 5 Nov 2010 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Fri, 5 Nov 2010 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sat, 6 Nov 2010 00:00:00 IST