Heavy short-covering owing to the derivatives expiry on Thursday, saw the markets surge towards the end of the day.

The Sensex on Thursday opened in the red at 15,169 and slipped further to a low of 15,065. The index, however, rebounded on positive global cues. The index soared 345 points from the low to a high of 15,410 near the end of the day.

The Sensex finally ended at 15,388 - up 214 points.

The BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were underperfomers and gained 29 points and 49 points, respectively.

The BSE IT, FMCG and Bankex added around 2.5% each.

The Nifty, meanwhile, ended with a gain of 58 points at 4,571. The index on Thursday surged to a high of 4,582 - up 107 points from the low of 4,475.

The markets have ended in the positive zone for the first time in the week.

The market breadth was fairly positive. out of 2,758 stocks traded 1,503 advanced while 1,170 declined on the BSE.

INDEX MOVERS...

TCS [ Get Quote ] surged 6% to Rs 530. Hindustan Unilever rallied 5% to Rs 282.

Wipro [ Get Quote ] and HDFC [ Get Quote ] gained 4.5% each at Rs 489 and Rs 2,465, respectively.

SBI [ Get Quote ] added 4% to Rs 1,723. ICICI Bank [ Get Quote ] and HDFC Bank moved up 3-4% each.

Tata Steel [ Get Quote ], ITC, ACC, Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Infrastructure, Jaiprakash Associates [ Get Quote ], NTPC, Infosys [ Get Quote ] and Mahindra & Mahindra were the other major gainers.

In Nifty, SAIL [ Get Quote ] and Ambuja Cement [ Get Quote ] added 4.5% each to Rs 176 and Rs 104, respectively. BPCL [ Get Quote ], Gail India [ Get Quote ] and Tata Communications also added around 3%.

...AND THE SHAKERS

Sun Pharma [ Get Quote ] could not recover from the negative zone and ended down 3.5% at Rs 1,145.

BHEL and Reliance dropped 1.5% each to Rs 2,203 and Rs 1,900, respectively.

Among the other Nifty 50 stocks, Punjab National Bank [ Get Quote ] tumbled 6% to Rs 705. Jindal Steel, Nalco, ABB and Cairn India [ Get Quote ] dropped 1-3% each.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Tata Steel topped the combined value chart with a turnover of Rs 1,109.88 crore, followed by Sterlite (Rs 880.69 crore), HDIL (Rs 799.98 crore), Unitech (Rs 776.38 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs 758.79 crore).

The combined volume chart was led by Unitech with trades of nearly 85 million shares, followed by Suzlon [ Get Quote ] (62.51 million), Ispat Industries [ Get Quote ] (46.06 million), Mahindra Satyam [ Get Quote ] (37.77 million) and Reliance Natural Resources [ Get Quote ] (33.73 million).

Image: The Bombay Stock Exchange [ Images ]