Last minute buying lifts market.

While majority of the Asian markets took a sharp dip today, the domestic indices shrugged off the intra-day volatile moves and registered decent gains at close. Earlier, the Asian market’s fall was led by the Japanese Nikkei 225, which crashed by 1.14% or 207 points at 18,010, followed by the Hang Seng Index (down 0.42% or 97 points at 22,960) and the Jakarta Index (down 0.32% or 7.46 points at 2,293).

Back in the domestic market, the Sensex moved six points up, above its previous close to open at 15,296 and advanced further to touch an intra-day high of 15,326 in the early trades. After displaying sideways movement for a while the Sensex drifted into the red. It tumbled sharply in the early noon trades to touch the day's low of 15,160, down 130 points from its last close.

The last hour of the trading session witnessed hectic activity, before selective buying saw the Sensex end in the green with a gain of 11 points at 15,301. The Nifty, too, after a mixed outing, moved up three points to close at 4,500.

However, the broader market was positive. Of the 2,705 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,480 stocks declined, 1,151 stocks advanced and 74 stocks ended unchanged.

The BSE Reality index led the surge in the sectoral indices and rose 1.62% at 8,078. The BSE CD index, the BSE Auto index, the BSE Teck index and the BSE Metal index were the other notable gainers while the BSE CG, the BSE FMCG index and the BSE Oil & Gas index ended weak.

Buying was led by Hindalco, which notched up gains of 3.22% at Rs184. Among the other gainers Bajaj Auto advanced 2.85% at Rs2,282, Bharti Airtel added 2.29% at Rs883, Grasim Industries moved up 2.09% at Rs2,915, ACC jumped by 2.03% at Rs1,133, RCOM gained 1.14% at Rs567 and TCS was up 1.09% at Rs1,164. However, L&T, ONGC, Reliance Energy, Satyam, ITC, Dr Reddy’s and HDFC were down 1% each.

A sharp rally was witnessed in realty stocks today. DLF soared 5.78% at Rs645, Akruti Nirman scaled up 4.34% at Rs539, Sobha Developers surged 2.71% at Rs930 and Mahindra Gesco moved up 2.50% at Rs558. Penland, Anant Rajin and Parsvanath also ended at a higher level.

Hectic buying was seen in pharma stocks as well. Zee News, Himachal Futuristic, Bharti Airtel, VSNL, HT Media, Idea Cell, Financial Technologies, IOL Broadband and Sasken Communication flared up 1-19% each.

Over 2 crore RNRL shares changed hands on the BSE followed by KS Oils (1.04 crore shares), Mangalore Chemical (90.30 lakh shares), IDBI (89.75 lakh shares) and IFCI (75.03 lakh shares).

Value-wise, DLF registered a turnover of Rs375 crore on the BSE followed by India Bulls Reality (Rs226 crore), GMR Infra (Rs165 crore), RIL (Rs126 crore) and Akruti Nirman (Rs125 crore).