The Sensex opened with a smart positive gap of 17 points, and thereafter did not bother to look back.

Unabated buying in the market led the index surge to an intra-day high of 8766 - up 128 points.

The index finally closed with a healthy gain of 106 points or 1.2% at 8744.

The Nifty moved in a range of 2644 to 2609, before settling with gains of 1% or 26 points at 2635.

Four Sensex stocks hit a new all-time high in today's trading. BHEL at Rs 1,354, Reliance Industries at Rs 848, Bajaj Auto at Rs 2,098 and Larsen & Toubro at Rs 1,610.

ITC was the star performer of the day, after touching a high of Rs 136 the stock finally closed with gains of 4.3% at Rs 135. It was followed by Grasim at Rs 1,351 and HDFC at Rs 1,086, up 3.1% each.

Cipla at Rs 405, HLL at Rs 177 and ICICI Bank (public issue to open on December 1) at Rs 539 gained 2% each. ACC, Bajaj Auto, Bharti Tele, BHEL, Gujarat Ambuja, Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Industries, Tata Motors and Wipro were up over 1% each.

On the other Ranbaxy (continued negative news flow) at Rs 362 was down 1.1%. Dr.Reddy's and Satyam were the only other notable losers.

The market breadth was fairly positive with around three advancing stocks for every two declining shares. Out of a total of 2,546 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,462 stocks advanced, 1,025 stocks declined while the rest were unchanged.

Reliance Industries was the top traded counter with a turnover of Rs 171.65 crore followed by Reliance Capital at Rs 140.61 crore (Rs 1.4 billion) and SBI at Rs 122.46 crore (Rs 1.22 billion) on the BSE.

Volumewise - 62.92 lakh shares changed hands at the Ispat Industries counter followed by 60.81 lakh shares of IFCI and 41.07 lakh shares of ITC on the BSE.