The Sensex opened with a negative gap of 89 points at 17,402, and dropped to a low of 17,287 in morning deals.

The index moved into positive zone soon on the back of fresh buying in select stocks. As buying spread to other counters, the index began to move to higher levels. And then the mood turned...

The Sensex story: From 1K to 18K

Frenzied buying in the last hour of trade saw the index zoom to a new all-time intra-day high of 18,327 - up 1,040 points from the day's low.

The Sensex finally ended at a record 18,280 - up 789 points (4.5%) - which is also the biggest single-day gain for the index.

 The Nifty gained 242 points to close at 5,327.

The last 1,000-point rally took just eight trading days, while the last 2,000 points have come in a short span of 13 trading sessions.

The market breadth was fairly positive today - out of 2,783 stocks traded, 1,784 advanced, 932 declined and 67 were unchanged.

LEADING THE CHARGE...

Reliance Energy [Get Quote] zoomed over 11% to Rs 1,534, and Reliance Communications [Get Quote] soared over 10% to Rs 706.

Maruti [Get Quote] and Reliance surged nearly 8% each to Rs 1,105 and Rs 2,600, respectively. NTPC gained 6.4% at Rs 218.

SBI [Get Quote] and Tata Steel [Get Quote] rallied around 6% each to Rs 1,890 and Rs 835, respectively.

Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] and ACC moved up over 5.5% each to Rs 1,040 and Rs 1,177, respectively.

Grasim [Get Quote], ONGC [Get Quote] and Larsen & Toubro advanced around 5% each to Rs 3,602, Rs 985 and Rs 3,163, respectively.

Wipro [Get Quote] was up over 4% at Rs 489. Tata Motors [Get Quote], Ranbaxy [Get Quote] and ITC added 3.5% each to Rs 792, Rs 427 and Rs 185, respectively.

Satyam [Get Quote] and ICICI bank [Get Quote] gained around 3% each at Rs 471 and Rs 1,046, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance Energy topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 440 crore followed by Reliance Communications (Rs 408 crore), Reliance (Rs 355 crore), Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 313 crore) and Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (Rs 306.50 crore).

Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 3.61 crore followed by IFCI (2.76 crore), Power Grid (2.64 crore), Tata Teleservices [Get Quote] (2.41 crore) and Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (2.13 crore).