Continuing with its uptrend, the Sensex opened with a positive gap of 147 points at 13,782. Profit-taking in early trades saw the index pare gains and slip into red to a low of 13,581.

The index, however, soon rebounded and displayed positive trend for remainder of the day on the back of sustained buying in banking and FMCG stocks. The index surged to a high of 13,879 - up 298 points in late noon trades.

The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 215 points at 13,850. In the process, the index has rallied over 10% (1,274) points in the last three trading days.

The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,616 stocks traded, 1,363 declined, and 1,169 advanced today.

The NSE Nifty moved up 67 points to settle at 4,159.

Index movers...

Cipla soared over 5% to Rs 226.

HDFC Bank [Get Quote], Ranbaxy [Get Quote] and NTPC surged 4.7% each to Rs 1,083, Rs 458 and Rs 181, respectively.

ICICI Bank [Get Quote] rallied 4.3% to Rs 644, and Maruti [Get Quote] gained 4% at Rs 648.

Hindustan Unilever, Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] and SBI [Get Quote] moved up 3.7% each to Rs 228, Rs 167 and Rs 1,347, respectively.

Reliance Communications [Get Quote] advanced 2.6% to Rs 447, and TCS [Get Quote] added 2.3% to Rs 813.

Wipro [Get Quote] and Reliance were up 2% each at Rs 373 and Rs 2,153, respectively.

ITC, Mahindra & Mahindra, DLF and ONGC [Get Quote] were the other prominent gainers - up around 1.5% each - at Rs 179, Rs 528, Rs 463 and Rs 955, respectively.

...and the shakers

Satyam [Get Quote] has plunged over 4% to Rs 367.

Ambuja Cements slipped over 2% to Rs 81. BHEL shed 1.6% at Rs 1,506, and Larsen & Toubro dropped 1.3% to Rs 2,513.

Most active counters

Reliance Capital [Get Quote] topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 246 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 205 crore), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 196.60 crore), Reliance Communications (Rs 139.70 crore) and IDFC [Get Quote] (Rs 128 crore).

IDFC led the volume chart with trades of around 1.34 crore shares followed by Reliance Natural [Get Quote] Resourecs (88.85 lakkh), Reliance Petroleum [Get Quote] (64.75 lakh), IFCI (61.53 lakh) and First Win (59.90 lakh).