The markets rallied in late trades to end the session on a firm note. The domestic bourses had another tepid start in the absence of cues from the global front.
And with the benchmark indices remaining lacklustre through most of the session, we seemed to be staring at another listless closing. But a bout of buying activity towards close, with the hitherto active IT space further extending its gains, was enough to bolster the indices.
The Sensex ended at 18217, higher by 102 points and the Nifty ended at 5468, up 28 points. The midcap index ended at 7518, higher by two points and the smallcap index ended at 9516, up 49 points.
The US stocks had slipped overnight as Procter & Gamble's lackluster results, coupled with weaker-than-estimated data on consumer spending and housing, prompted investors to exercise caution a day after the market's 2 per cent rally.
The Dow dropped 38 points and Nasdaq lost 11 points to 2,283. And the Asian markets had a mixed opening as well.
With sectoral churning increasingly becoming a norm, the situation seemed to have been tailor-made for IT stocks to hog the limelight.
Stellar results and revised guidance on the part of IT major Cognizant had already driven the ADRs of IT majors such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro, higher by upto 3% each in overnight trades.
And taking a cue, TCS zoomed by 4.4% to end at Rs 870 to emerge as the leading gainer on the BSE. Wipro added 3.9% at Rs 428 and Infosys moved up by 2.9% at Rs 2867.
And in the broader IT space, HCL Tech strengthened by 2.8% at Rs 402 and Mphasis gained 2.6% at Rs 609. The other major Sensex gainers included BHEL, Reliance Infra and Hero Honda.
On the other hand, Bharti Airtel saw profit-booking after the gains of the previous session. The telecom major lost 1.6% at RS 323.
And metal stocks fell as metal prices declined on London Metal Exchange on Tuesday; Tata Steel shed 1% at Rs 541 and Sterlite edged lower by 0.2% at Rs 178.
Meanwhile, the debutant Midfield Industries listed at a premium of 20% at Rs 159 on the BSE, against its issue price of Rs 133 per share. The stock finally closed at 163, higher by 23% on the NSE.
The market breadth was strong. Out of 3065 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1552 advancing stocks as against 1369 declines.
