The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 121 points at 20,703. Follow-up selling saw the index slip into the negative zone to a low of 20,506 - down 197 points from the day's open.

The index, thereafter, gyrated between zones for most of the trading day. Aggressive buying towards the close saw the index surge to a high of 20,895 - up 389 points from the day's low.

The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 245 points at 20,827.

While the Small-cap index slipped 1.3% to 12,694, the Mid-cap index ended flat at 9,438.

The NSE Nifty recovered from a low of 6,113, and touched a high of 6,224, before finishing with a gain of 43 points at 6,200.

The market breadth was fairly negative - out of 2,864 stocks traded, 2,091 declined, 739 advanced and 34 were unchanged today.

Index movers

ICICI Bank [Get Quote] zoomed over 6% to Rs 1,440. DLF soared 4.7% to Rs 1,196.

Reliance rallied 3.3% to Rs 3,128. HDFC Bank [Get Quote] and NTPC surged around 2.5% each to Rs 1,762 and Rs 272, respectively.

Tata Motors [Get Quote] advanced 1.8% to Rs 762, and TCS [Get Quote] added 1.5% to Rs 989.

ITC gained 1.3% at Rs 223. SBI [Get Quote], ONGC [Get Quote] and Cipla were up over 1% each at Rs 2,437, Rs 1,307 and Rs 204, respectively.

and the shakers

ACC plunged 4.3% to Rs 898. Mahindra & Mahindra tumbled 3.5% to Rs 775.

Satyam [Get Quote] and HDFC slipped 2.2% each to Rs 411 and Rs 3,061, respectively.

Ambuja Cements and Hindustan Unilever shed 2% each at Rs 139 and Rs 224, respectively.

Infosys [Get Quote] declined 1.4% to Rs 1,580, and Maruti [Get Quote] was down 1% at Rs 899. 

Value & volume toppers

Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 561 crore followed by Aries Agro (Rs 480.80 crore), Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (Rs 392.70 crore), Reliance (Rs 296 crore) and Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 255.60 crore).