The market was extremely volatile in the opening bell. After commencing with a huge negative gap of 50 points at 4,696, the index soon breached the 4,800 levels on strong buying support in most of the counters.

Profit-taking in select old economy stocks coupled with weakness in pharma counters saw the index move in a range of 20-40 points gain in the latter half of the first session.

While renewed buying emerged in the afternoon trades, stocks rallied sharply towards the closing hours and lifted the index to an intra-day high of 4,824.

The Sensex finally snapped the three day losing streak with a gain of 69 points at 4,815. The Nifty came off its intra-day high of 1,508, and finally ended 20 points higher at 1,501.

While 25 Sensex stocks advanced, five declined today. Advancing shares registered a volume of 2.79 crore amounting to Rs 1,011.71 crore, and declining shares accounted for a volume of 21 lakh for Rs 67.42 crore.

Heavyweight, PSU and tech pivotals propelled the gains of the index following strong buying support.

Reliance attracted considerable buying support, and spurted 3.69% (Rs 16) to Rs 451. While ITC clocked a per cent gain (Rs 6) to Rs 884, HLL was up a rupee at Rs 129.

BHEL added 2.42% (Rs 11) to Rs 461. While MTNL attracted considerable buying support, and moved up 3% (Rs 4) to Rs 130, ONGC was up a per cent (Rs 3) at Rs 638. SBI, which had a mixed outing today, finally closed higher at Rs 445 - up Rs 5 or 1.13%. HPCL, however, ended on a lacklustre note at Rs 336 - down Rs 8 or 2.40%.

Infosys advanced 1.76% (Rs 88) to Rs 5,084. Wipro scaled up 3.11% (Rs 45) to Rs 1,488. Satyam added 2.12% (Rs 6) to Rs 292.

Tata Power soared 7% (Rs 16) to Rs 238. Tisco flared up 5.48% (Rs 15) to Rs 288.

Auto and cement majors ended with modest gains.

Tata Motors rose 2.25% (Rs 9) to Rs 396. While Hero Honda added 1.41% (Rs 7) to Rs 482, Maruti closed up a per cent (Rs 3) at Rs 393. Bajaj ended with a modest gain of Rs 2 at Rs 892.

Grasim and Gujarat Ambuja ended off-highs at Rs 935 (up Rs 3) and Rs 272 (up Rs 2), respectively. ACC was up a per cent (Rs 2) at Rs 238.

Hindalco rose sharply towards the fag-end to close 2.34% higher (Rs 22) at Rs 965. Zee also ended higher with a gain of 2.11% (Rs 3) at Rs 128. Bharti, however, was down a per cent (Rs 2) at Rs 138.

Pharma stocks largely finished with losses. Dr. Reddy's (down Rs 7 to Rs 789) and Cipla (down Rs 4 to Rs 224) ended on a subdued note. Ranbaxy, however, recouped from its losses on renewed buying, and closed up a per cent (Rs 7) at Rs 998.