The Sensex opened firm with a 14 points gain over its last close at 6,701.
While the market reported a buoyant trend throughout the trading session, the sentiment turned extremely bullish in the afternoon trades as frenzied buying across the board triggered the rally, which saw the index zoom to an all-time intra-day high of 6,794 in late noon trades.
The Sensex finally settled with a new closing high of 6,785 - a gain of 98 points. The Nifty, too, rallied sharply to end at a new high of 2,129 - up 36 points.
While 27 Sensex stocks advanced, two declined and one ended unchanged today. Advancing shares accounted for a volume of 1.68 crore for Rs 817.32 crore, and declining shares clocked a volume of 12 lakh amounting to Rs 41.90 crore.
ONGC, on reports of gas finds in Godavari basin, jumped 3.88% (Rs 33) to Rs 889. Reliance advanced 1.76% (Rs 10) to Rs 558.
While HLL gained 2.49% (Rs 4) to Rs 150, ITC was up Rs 5 at Rs 1,345.
SBI scaled up 1.59% (Rs 11) to Rs 717. While ICICI Bank logged 1.86% gains (Rs 7) to Rs 397, HDFC Bank was up a rupee at Rs 577.
Wipro spurted 3.87% (Rs 26) to Rs 697. While Infosys rose 1.62% (Rs 35) to Rs 2,218, Satyam ended steady with a gain of Rs 3 at Rs 400.
Bajaj rose 3.81% (Rs 40) to Rs 1,084, and Hero Honda moved up 2.41% (Rs 13) to Rs 564. While Tata Motors flared up 3.31% (Rs 15) to Rs 479, Maruti jumped 2.41% (Rs 11) to Rs 474.
Grasim added 1.14% (Rs 15) to Rs 1,361. Gujarat Ambuja and ACC were up a per cent each at Rs 446 and Rs 372, respectively.
Ranbaxy surged 1.73% (Rs 17) to Rs 1,018. While Cipla added 3.95% (Rs 10) to Rs 268, Dr. Reddy's ended flat at Rs 722.
Reliance Energy was up a per cent (Rs 6) at Rs 557, while Tata Power added 1.42% (Rs 6) to Rs 403. L&T, however, declined 1.19% (Rs 13) to Rs 1,100.