The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 90 points at 14,217 on the back of firm global cues. Unabated buying in banking and select heavyweights saw the index exhibit a firm trend for most part of the session today.

The Sensex rallied to a high of 14,353 before profit-taking towards the end saw the index pare gains. The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 172 points at 14,300.

The BSE Oil & Gas index soared over 2% to 7580. The Bankex rallied 1.7% to 7538, and the Metal index surged over 1% to 10,365. The Auto index, however, was down 0.8% at 5004.

The market breadth turned negative at close - out of 2,685 stocks traded, 1,337 declined, 1,272 advanced and 76 were unchanged today.

BAJAJ TUMBLES AT CLOSE

Bajaj Auto was in the limelight in the latter half of the day. The stock was quite and traded with a negative bias in the first half of the trading session. However, the stock rebounded into positive zone and rallied over 2% to Rs 2,747 on the back of good results and the hefty dividend announcement.

However, lack of clarity on the demerger front saw the stock take a hard knock in closing trades. The stock tumbled to a low of Rs 2,398 - down 12.7% from the day's high within 10-15 minutes.

Bajaj Auto finally ended the day with a loss of 6.7% at Rs 2,500. Around 6.82 lakh shares changed hands as against its two-day daily traded average volume of around 99,000 shares.

SBI, RELIANCE LEAD....

SBI soared over 3% to Rs 1,328, and Reliance surged 3% to Rs 1,685.

Dr.Reddy's, Tata Motors, TCS and ACC rallied around 2% each to Rs 678, Rs 751, Rs 1,248 and Rs 889, respectively.

Reliance Communications and ICICI Bank moved up 1.8% each to Rs 500 and Rs 936, respectively.

Infosys, Maruti and Tata Steel were up around 1.5% each at Rs 1,983, Rs 815 and Rs 597, respectively.

ITC, NTPC, BHEL, Grasim, ONGC and Wipro gained around 1% each at Rs 165, Rs 159, Rs 2,624, Rs 2,531, Rs 909 and Rs 545, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Unitech topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 247 crore followed by debutant Bhagwati Banquets (Rs 205.20 crore), Bajaj Auto (Rs 179 crore), Reliance (Rs 165 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 131.55 crore).

Bhagwati Banquets led the volume chart with trades of around 4.10 crore shares followed by IFCI (2.36 crore), Reliance Natural Resources (1.57 crore), Nagarjuna Fertilisers (78 lakh) and Tata Teleservices (70.50 lakh).