Sensex ends up 165 pts

The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 43 points at 15,547, but slipped to a low of 15,469 - down 78 points from the day's open.

Fresh buying at lower levels helped the index move into positive zone in early noon deals. Buying gained momentum towards the closing bell, and the index rallied to a high of 15,692 - up 223 points from the day's low.

The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 165 points at 15,669.

The BSE Bankex advanced 2.5% to 8291. The Oil & Gas and PSU indices were up 1.5% each at 8499 and 7386, respectively.

The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,837 stocks traded, 1,813 advanced, 968 declined and 56 were unchanged today.

INDEX MOVERS...

ICICI Bank soared 3.4% to Rs 925, and SBI surged nearly 3% to Rs 1,693.

Bharti Airtel and Reliance Energy rallied over 2% each to Rs 832 and Rs 927, respectively.

ONGC moved up 1.8% to Rs 851. Mahindra & Mahindra, Reliance and Grasim gained 1.5% each at Rs 708, Rs 2,058 and Rs 3,257, respectively.

NTPC, Reliance Communications, Larsen & Toubro and ACC were up over 1% each at Rs 185, Rs 537, Rs 2,620 and Rs 1,123, respectively.

...AND THE SHAKERS

Cipla dropped 2% to Rs 168. Wipro slipped over 1% to Rs 444.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance Capital topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 224 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 176 crore), Reliance Industrial Infrastructure (Rs 130 crore), Reliance Energy (Rs 129 crore) and Iwind Energy (Rs 121.50 crore).

Ispat Industries led the volume chart with trades of around 3.20 crore shares followed by Sun Iron Steel (1.05 crore), IFCI (94.80 lakh), Mangalore Chemicals (94.50 lakh) and Iwind Energy (89.65 lakh).