Sensex gains 139pts, Rel Comm, Bharti surge

The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 24 points at 11,946. Weakness in the opening trades, following yesterday's late sell-off and weak global markets, saw the index plunge to a low of 11,834.

Fresh buying at lower levels saw the index erase all its loss and rebound into positive zone. The index, thereafter, displayed a range-bound movement for most part of the session with a positive bias.

In the last half-hour of trade, the index did exactly opposite of what it did yesterday i.e instead of a steep fall, the index zoomed to a high of 12,129 - up 295 points from the day's low.

The Sensex finally settled with a gain of 139 points at 12,109.

The BSE TECk index gained 1.6% at 2988. The Auto, FMCG and Metal indices advanced 1% each to 5165, 2044 and 8113, respectively.

INDEX MOVERS & SHAKERS

Bharti Airtel surged 5% to Rs 462. Reliance Communications rallied 4.3% to Rs 346.

Larsen & Toubro moved up nearly 2% to Rs 2,697. ONGC, NTPC, TCS, HDFC, Tata Steel and ITC advanced over 1.5% each to Rs 1,173, Rs 130, Rs 1,028, Rs 1,370, Rs 497, Rs 187, respectively.

Tata Motors, Maruti, HLL, Bajaj Auto, Reliance Energy and Wipro were up 1% each.

HDFC Bank slipped 1% to Rs 871.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Debutant Voltamp Transformers topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 345.20 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 138 crore), Indiabulls (Rs 136.30 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs 129.70 crore) and Educomp Solutions (Rs 115.10 crore).

Voltamp also led the volume chart with trades of around 84.32 lakh shares followed by Tata Teleservices (83.23 lakh), Harig Cranks (74.05 lakh), Reliance Communications (38.21 lakh) and Indiabulls (34.33 lakh).