The Sensex opened 91 points higher at 8,913 on the back of a strong bounce back on the Wall Street. Fresh buying in auto and IT stocks helped the index extend gains and touch a high of 8,995.
The index, however, pared gains towards the close on the back of weakness in select realty and capital goods stocks. The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 81 points at 8,903.
The NSE Nifty ended at 2763, up 29 points.
The BSE Auto index rallied 3% to Rs 2,622, and the IT index surged 2.5% to 2,087.
The market breadth was marginally positive - out of 2,523 stocks traded, 1,228 advanced, 1,190 declined and 105 were unchanged on Wednesday.
INDEX MOVERS...
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) zoomed 8% to Rs 318. Tata Motors soared nearly 6% to Rs 140.
Reliance Infrastructure surged 3.6% to Rs 507. Maruti rallied over 3% to Rs 663.
TCS, Wipro and Infosys gained nearly 3% each at Rs 480, Rs 218 and Rs 1,216, respectively.
Hindalco and ONGC moved up 2.5% each to Rs 40 and Rs 697, respectively.
Sun Pharma advanced nearly 2% to Rs 1,022. Grasim, ICICI Bank, Sterlite and BHEL were up around 1.5% each.
...AND THE SHAKERS
Ranbaxy plunged 3.5% to Rs 207. HDFC shed 2.7% at Rs 1,254.
Larsen & Toubro dropped 2% to Rs 612. Reliance Communications and DLF were down nearly 2% each at Rs 154 and Rs 155, respectively.
VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS
Educomp Solutions topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 164.20 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 122.55 crore), DLF (Rs 113.70 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 107.70 crore) and Reliance Infrastructure (Rs 94.10 crore).
Satyam led the volume chart with trades of around 96.63 lakh shares followed by Cals Refineries (79.28 lakh), DLF (72.21 lakh), Unitech (67.52 lakh) and Suzlon Energy (62.53 lakh).