The market opened marginally up this morning, traded firm for about an hour but fell into the red following a strong round of selling in several front line stocks in late morning trade due to weakness on the Asian bourses amid some weak economic data.

However, riding on hectic buying in realty, bank, information technology, FMCG, telecom and oil stocks, the market rebounded into the positive territory a little past noon and kept moving higher till around mid afternoon when another round of selling took a toll
of some blue chips and wiped off a significant portion of its gains.

Then, amid high volatility, stock prices edged higher once again and the benchmark BSE index finally ended the session with a strong gain of 151.63 points or 1.05% at 14,645.47. Earlier, the barometer had rallied to 14,727.49 from the day's low of 14,355.52.

The National Stock Exchange's 50 stock Nifty index closed at 4340.90, recording a gain of 49.80 points or 1.16% for the day. The Nifty touched a low of 4249.70 and a high of 4362.30 today.

Realty stock DLF (4.8%) was the top gainer in the Sensex today. Mahindra & Mahindra closed with a gain of 3.2%. Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Communications gained close to 3%. Tata Motors, which had a couple of weak outings, ended stronger by 2.8%. Bharti Airtel (2.6%), Sun Pharmaceuticals (2.55%), State Bank of India (2.2%) and Hindustan Unilever (2.1%) also closed with impressive gains.

Jaiprakash Associates and Reliance Industries moved up by around 1.7%. Infosys Technologies, Tata Steel and ICICI Bank gained 1% - 1.15%. HDFC Bank, Tata Consultancy Services, BHEL, Sterlite Industries, ITC, Larsen & Toubro and Maruti Suzuki closed with modest gains. Hero Honda, NTPC, HDFC and Wipro ended almost unchanged from their previous closing levels.

Hindalco ended 3.5% down with weak results dragging the stock for the second successive day. ONGC closed with a loss of 1.35%. ACC, Tata Power and Grasim Industries ended with modest losses.

BPCL moved up by nearly 6%. Axis Bank, Reliance Capital, Idea Cellular, Unitech, Siemens, Suzlon Energy, Ambuja Cements, Tata Communications and HCL Technologies gained 2% - 4.5% today. SAIL, Cairn India, Punjab National Bank and Jindal Steel also signed off on a positive note. Cipla, Power Grid Corporation and Nalco closed with sharp losses.

Though midcap stocks rebounded after a weak spell around noon, smallcap stocks remained highly subdued today.

NIIT (14.65%), Educomp Solutions (12%) and Aptech (10.4%) rose sharply today on sustained buying support on expectations the government will come out with some positive proposals for the IT education segment.

The market breadth was slightly positive at close. Out of 2673 stocks traded on BSE today, 1255 stocks advanced and 1339 stocks declined. 79 stocks ended flat.

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The volume of business on the bourses was thin today. At Rs 16,660.11 crore, the turnover on the National Stock Exchange was lower by around Rs 2,680 crore than the turnover recorded by the exchange in the previous session.