Sensex surges to 9618, up 79pts

The Sensex has scaled to a new life-time intra-day peak of 9627, and is now up 79 points at 9618.

ITC and Satyam are up 3% each at Rs 148 and Rs 765, respectively.

NTPC at Rs 115 and Tata Motors at Rs 659 are up over 2% each.

Bajaj Auto, Dr.Reddy's, Gujarat Ambuja, Larsen & Toubro, Reliance, SBI and Wipro are up 1-2% each.

ONGC has shed 1% to Rs 1,198.

Maruti and Grasim are the only other notable losers.

Advances are ahead of declines - out of 2,420 stocks traded on the BSE, so far, 1,522 have moved up, 838 have declined and the rest are unchanged.