After a marginally weak day on Tuesday, the bulls came back in full strength to settle the score on Wednesday.
IT and FMCG shares were the most sought on hopes of strong Q2 numbers.
Realty stocks also witnessed selective buying. Bears were caught on the wrong foot as expectations of some kind of correction ahead of the mega Coal India IPO remained unfulfilled.
The Sensex after a rather quiet start, build on gains as the day progressed.
The buying momentum was so strong, that the index rallied all the way to a high of 20,704. The Sensex finally settled with a gain of 484 points at 20,688. Meanwhile, the FII inflows have now crossed the magical Rs 1-trillion mark.
The NSE Nifty ended with a gain of 143 points at 6234.
The Mid-caps and small-caps kind of under-performed the large-caps. The BSE mid-cap and small-cap indexex were up around 1% each as against a 2.4% gain on the benchmark Sensex.
Among sectoral indices, the IT index soared over 3% to 6250. The Capital Goods, Realty and FMCG indices rallied around 2.5% each.
The market breadth was fairly positive -- out of 3,105 stocks traded today, 1,898 advanced while 1,075 declined on the BSE.
HDFC, TCS and Wipro surged over 4.5% each to Rs 740, Rs 992 and Rs 483, respectively.
Larsen & Toubro, Jaiprakash Associates and Hindustan Unilever rallied around 4% each to Rs 2,079, Rs 135 and Rs 303, respectively.
ACC, DLF, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hindalco, ITC, Bharti Airtel, Infosys and HDFC Bank were the other major gainers.
NTPC, however, down over 1% at Rs 208 was the sole loser among the index stocks.
Non-Sensex IT stocks like Oracle Financial Services, HCL Technologies, Patni Computers, Financial Technologies and Tech Mahindra also logged in solid gains on hopes of good performance in Q2 earnings.
Realty stocks - Indiabulls Realestate, D B Realty, Unitech, Sobha Developers, Phoenix Mills and HDIL also saw some value buying on hopes of positive surprises in the upcoming results.
Debutant Va Tech Wabag zoomed over 30% to Rs 1,709. The counter clocked a volume of 5.2 million shares on the BSE.
