The Sensex opened marginally (15 points) lower at 14,563  and moved down by 42 points in early trade today on small selling activity in banking and metal stocks. The trading sentiment turned sluggish following The index gyrated between zones till mid-noon trades wherein the index touched a low of 14,529.

Aggressive buying on the back of further drop in crude oil prices saw the index rally sharply in late noon trades. The US crude oil dropped to a low of $118 per barrel in Asian trades today.

Banking, cement, realty and capital goods stocks led the rally as the Sensex surged to a high of 14,987 - up 458 points from the day's low. The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 383 points at 14,961.

The BSE Bankex rallied 6.7% (450 points) to 7,218, and the Realty index surged 6.6% (343 points) to 5,575. The Auto index advanced over 4% (151 points) to 3,819. The BSE Metal index, however, slipped 1.9% (259 points) to 13,265.

The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,767 stocks traded, 1,786 advanced, 921 declined and 60 were unchanged today.

The NSE Nifty settled above the 4,500-mark at 4,503 - up 108 points.

Big movers...

ICICI Bank [Get Quote] zoomed over 8% to Rs 693. HDFC Bank [Get Quote] rallied nearly 7% to Rs 1,184, and SBI [Get Quote] added 4.6% to Rs 1,579.

DLF soared 7.7% to Rs 553. Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] surged 6% to Rs 185, and Reliance Infrastructure advanced over 4% to Rs 1,043.

Maruti [Get Quote] rallied 7.4% to Rs 614. Mahindra & Mahindra gained 5.5% at Rs 548, and Tata Motors [Get Quote] was up 3.2% at Rs 409.

Grasim [Get Quote] surged 6.5% to Rs 2,019. ACC spurted over 5% to Rs 616.

NTPC, Wipro [Get Quote] and HDFC moved up around 4% each to Rs 182, Rs 448 and Rs 2,465, respectively.

BHEL and Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] rallied around 3% each to Rs 1,770 and Rs 840, respectively.

Hindustan Unilever gained 2.5% at Rs 240. ONGC [Get Quote] advanced over 2% to Rs 1,002.

TCS [Get Quote] and Larsen & Toubro advanced 1.7% each to Rs 831 and Rs 2,699, respectively. Reliance added 1.5% to Rs 2,276.

Infosys [Get Quote], ITC and Satyam [Get Quote] were up over 1% each at Rs 1,677, Rs 190 and Rs 400, respectively.

...and the shakers

Sterlite slumped 6.8% to Rs 582. Tata Steel [Get Quote] shed 2.3% at Rs 676.

Tata Power [Get Quote] and Ranbaxy [Get Quote] dropped around 1.5% each to Rs 1,101 and Rs 516, respectively.

Most active counters

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 380 crore followed by Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 360 crore), Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (Rs 288.50 crore), ICICI Bank (Rs 220 crore) and Essar Oil [Get Quote] (Rs 203.65 crore).

Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 2.75 crore shares followed by Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (2.07 crore), IFCI (1.27 crore), Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (1.02 crore) and Kashyap Technologies (92.40 lakh).