There has been no slackening in pace. The Sensex established itself comfortably above the 17k summit to end at 17117, higher by 95 points and the Nifty ended at 5135, up 25 points.
The midcap index ended higher by 14 points at 6890 and the smallcap index gained 12 points at 8640.
The day had started on a rather sober note. With Wall Street ending virtually unchanged and Asia in no mood to press on the accelerator, we seemed to be heading for a quiet session.
No one would grudge that, for our bourses had moved higher in six of the seven previous trading sessions and accumulated gains of 6.2% in the process.
Moreover, the impending weekend would have postponed further buying. But Europe seemingly had other ideas.
The FTSE, DAX and CAC added upto a per cent each and this was enough to rouse our indices from their self-imposed stupor.
Our markets, which were hovering around the previous day's closing levels and had infact dipped below the 17k mark at one point, began a slow and steady climb that culminated near the highs of the day.
Maruti made a late surge to end at the top of the BSE gainers list. The auto major raced ahead by 2.6% at Rs 1331. SBI added 2.4% at Rs 2341 and RCom rebounded from its intra-day lows of Rs 159 to end with gains of another 2.2% at Rs 168.
RCom has now added 12% in the past three trading sessions. And the FMCG sector occupied centre-stage through the day. ITC extended its recent run by 2% at Rs 290 and Hindustan Unilever pared its early gains to end 1.7% higher at Rs 251.
And sugar stocks spurted on hopes that the government may re-impose import duty on white sugar. Dhampur Sugar, Sakthi Sugar and Simbhaoli Sugars gained more than 4% each, while Balrampur Chini, Bajaj Hindustan and Shree Renuka Sugars added 2-4% each.
On the losers side, ONGC weakened by 1.7% at Rs 1189 to emerge as the top loser on the BSE. HDFC Bank shed 0.9% at Rs 1887 and Tata Power lost 0.6% at Rs 1239. Index heavyweight RIL ended flat, with a negative bias, at Rs 1030.
The market breadth was neutral. Out of 2939 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1401 advancing stocks as against 1414 declines.
