Shares hit record highs on Friday, with Reliance Industries and Tata Steel Ltd leading the gains, as higher derivatives rollover led to strong follow-up buying in index heavyweights.

The Sensex raced past 31,000-mark today for the first time to clock an intra-day high of 31,034.30. At about 2 pm, the 30-share barometer was up 245 points or 0.80 per cent at 30,994.63. The gauge had rallied 448.39 points in the previous session.

The benchmark BSE Sensex has risen nearly 26 per cent since the BJP—led NDA government came to power in May 2014.

Firmness in the rupee against the dollar and fall in global crude oil prices also influenced trading sentiment, brokers said.

Similarly, the NSE Nifty hit an intra-day high of 9,592.15. At about 2 pm, the Nifty was at 9,581.20, up Rs 71.45 or 0.75 per cent.

“Most of the movement on the indexes since Thursday is due to broad index-level buying in the markets because of the F&O expiry,” said Tirthankar Patnaik, chief strategist and head of research, India at Mizuho Bank.

“On Thursday, major shorts were covered and longs have been rolled, so there is follow-up buying in today's session. Nifty saw 75 per cent rollover yesterday,” said Miraj Vora, derivative analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt. Ltd.

A higher rollover is typically a bullish sign and means investors expect gains to continue.

Moreover, data showing that foreign institutional investors made sizeable buying to the tune of Rs 589.11 crore on Thursday buoyed sentiment.

Reliance Industries Ltd gained as much as 3.22 per cent, while Tata Steel Ltd gained as much as 5.6 per cent to Rs 511.90, its highest since September 2014.

The Tata Steel stock cleared a resistance seen around Rs 497.54, the 23.6 pct Fibonacci projection of wave (1). Breakout suggests stock may move towards Rs 540.74, the 38.2 pct Fibonacci projection level. The stock's 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) crossed above its 50-day EMA this week, seen positive for stock. MACD is also positive and above its signal line. German industrial group Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel expect a merger of their European steel businesses to yield annual savings 400-600 mln euros, a report said on Thursday. Tata Steel stock is up 49.3 per cent in the past one year, compared with a 19.9 per cent gain in NSE index, as of Thursday's close.

Consumer firm ITC Ltd, which is slated to report March quarter results later in the day, gained as much as 1.55 per cent.

Meanwhile, downstream oil companies lost some ground.

“There is some profit-booking in downstream oil companies," Patnaik said.

Indian Oil Corp Ltd slipped for the first time in three sessions, falling as much as 5.2 per cent, while Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd lost as much as 3.3 per cent and looked set to snap three sessions of gains.

Pharma company Cipla Ltd dropped to an eleven-month low after posting a quarterly loss against analysts' expectations.

Barring healthcare, all BSE sectoral indices of the BSE led by metal, capital goods and consumer durables were in the positive zone, rising up to 3.6 per cent.

Prominent gainers that helped the markets to trade at an all—time high were Tata Steel, Adani Ports, Reliance, Asian Paints, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, L&T, Infosys and PowerGrid, rising up to 6 per cent.

Global markets

European stock markets opened down as turbulence in oil markets following Thursday's OPEC meeting, at which oil producers extended existing output cuts but did not expand them, undermined sentiment towards risk assets in general. Asian shares also fell.

Some of the sharpest moves came in currencies, where Britain's pound fell over 0.5 percent to $1.2861 and looked set for its biggest one-day slide in over three weeks and steepest one-week decline since early April.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan , which closed at a two-year high on Thursday, fell 0.2 per cent, shrinking its weekly gain to 1.45 per cent.

The US Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.34 per cent higher in yesterday’s trade.