Sensex moves above 20000

A late spurt in index heavyweight Reliance Industries on Wednesday saw the Sensex and Nifty close above the 20,000 and 6,000 marks, respectively, after remaining firm throughout the day. Even so, midcaps and smallcaps outperformed the benchmarks.

Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex settled at 20,192.52, up 1.70 per cent or 338.40 points. It touched an intra-day high of 20,211.47. The low was 19,896.61.

National Stock Exchange's Nifty ended at 6070.75, up 85 points or 1.43 per cent. It scaled a high of 6085.25 from a low of 5988.45.

Investor interest in second rung shares saw the BSE Midcap Index end up 2 per cent and BSE Smallcap Index 3 per cent higher.

However, volume has been low the last few sessions on account of thin investor participation. The NSE today clocked a turnover of Rs 15,693 crore against Rs 18,235.85 crore week ago.

"Although the Nifty has recovered smartly, the low volume is a cause of concern. Only if the Nifty breaks 6185 decisively, can the index see a good upmove," said Manas Jaiswal, senior technical analyst with Emkay Shares & Stock Brokers.

Shares of oil & gas companies posted smart gains. State-owned HPCL surged 6.78 per cent, BPCL added 5.46 per cent and IOC gained 6.55 per cent. Reliance Industries rose nearly 4 per cent.

After lying low for most of the day, the BSE IT Index ended flat. Satyam Computer finished up 1.04 per cent, Infosys Technologies inched 0.15 per cent higher and Wipro was up 0.07 per cent.

DLF (up 4.35%), Hindalco Industries (4.18%), Reliance Industries (3.90%), Tata Steel (3.51%), Tata Motors (3.3%), State Bank of India ( 2.97%) and BHEL (2.63%) were the biggest Sensex gainers.

Bajaj Auto (down 1.14%), TCS (0.99%), ONGC (0.90%), Hindustan Unilever (0.39%), HDFC (0.27%) were the laggards.

Across BSE, 2,283 shares advanced, 639 declined and 23 remained unchanged.