The Sensex opened with a steady gain of six points over its last close at 6,556. Though early profit-booking dragged the index to a low of 6,552, it soon recovered to surge past the 6,600-mark in early noon trades.While the market was extremely buoyant in the afternoon trades, the Sensex came off-highs in mid-noon trades amid steady selling pressure in select counters.The Sensex, however, firmed up in late noon trades to touch an intra-day high of 6,617 before closing 56 points higher at 6,606.Reliance flared up 2.73% (Rs 15) to Rs 571. ITC jumped 1.70% (Rs 23) to Rs 1,373, and HLL rose 2.59% (Rs 3) to Rs 133. ONGC, on late buying support, was up Rs 4 at Rs 916.Zee vaulted 5.69% (Rs 8) to Rs 148 on strong buying support.Grasim added 1.59% (Rs 19) to Rs 1,230. Gujarat Ambuja and ACC were up a per cent each at Rs 413 (up Rs 4) and Rs 364 (up Rs 2), respectively.Wipro (up Rs 9 to Rs 669), Infosys (up Rs 12 to Rs 2,232) and Satyam (up Rs 4 to Rs 421) ended with steady gains.HDFC Bank gained 1.94% (Rs 10) to Rs 553. SBI was up a per cent (Rs 6) at Rs 652. ICICI Bank, however, ended marginally lower at Rs 424.BHEL at Rs 812 (up Rs 11 or 1.35%), HPCL at Rs 322 (up Rs 6 or 1.75%), Tisco at Rs 390 (up Rs 8 or 2%) and Tata Power at Rs 352 (up Rs 6 or 1.66%) advanced on decent buying support.Tata Motors moved up 1.49% (Rs 6) to Rs 412, and Maruti clocked 1.37% gains (Rs 5) to Rs 408. Bajaj, however, dropped 1.67% (Rs 18) to Rs 1,066, and Hero Honda slipped a per cent (Rs 5) to Rs 535. While Bharti tumbled 2.32% (Rs 5) to Rs 212, HDFC lost 1.45% (Rs 10) to Rs 713.The sentiment was clearly bullish - Out of 2,282 scrips traded, 1,532 advanced, 672 declined and 78 were unchanged today. The BSE FMCG, BSE Metal and BSE Oil & Gas indices closed with gains of over 1% each.Ispat topped the volume chart with trades in over 41 lakh shares followed by SAIL (30.76 lakh shares) and Tata Steel (29.70 lakh shares).Reliance was the most active counter with a traded value of Rs 148.53 crore followed by HOEC (Rs 106.45 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 82.71 crore).
