With eyes set on 15,000-mark, bulls, on Wednesday, continued their record-run on the bourses for third day in a row with the benchmark Sensex settling at a new peak of 14,880.24 on strong buying in auto, cement and metal stocks.

The Bombay Stock Exchange’s 30-share barometer index closed with a gain of 73.73 points after crossing the 14,900- mark for the first time ever to reach an intra-day peak of 14,906.93 earlier in the day. The Sensex had closed at 14,806.51 points on Tuesday.

The index, which Wednesday extended its uptrend to the fifth consecutive session, has been scaling new closing as well as intra-day peaks for the past three days in a row. The bulls are eyeing 15,000-level as the next obvious milestone, while betting on the build-up to first quarter earnings season as the major driver, market analysts said.

The 50-share Nifty of National Stock Exchange ended with a marginal gain of 1.75 points at a new peak of 4,359.30 points, surpassing its previous close of 4,357.55 points. Smart gains were seen in blue-chips like RIL, ACC, Grasim, GACL, L&T, ICICI Bank, Reliance Com, Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Maruti and NTPC.