Markets have a robust closing

The bulls came back with a bang after being at the receiving end in the past four sessions and sidelined for a greater part of last month.

The Sensex extended the intra-day rebound of the previous session and reclaim the 18k mark to end at 18205, higher by 234 points and Nifty ended at 5471, up 69 points.

The midcap index ended at 7723, higher by 127 points and the smallcap index ended at 9712, up 172 points.

The key benchmark indices had begun the day on a firm note, tracking the decent gains across Asia.

The Hang Seng and Nikkei had gained in the region of about half a per cent each in early trades, what with the Dow maintaining its head above 10k to end flat at 10,014 overnight.

After trading in a stable manner all through the morning session, the markets back home got a fillip around noon as the European markets began on a cheerful note and trading in US futures suggests a decent start to the proceedings on Wall Street.

The FTSE, CAC and DAX have gained between 1% and 2% each in mid-day trades and the Dow seems headed to open higher by about half a per cent.