After the 249-pt rally yesterday and strong gains in the US markets, the Sensex opened with a positive gap of 76 points at 15,626, and rallied to a fresh all-time intra-day high of 15,683 - up 133 points from the previous close.

The index, thereafter, moved in a narrow range of 30-odd points (15,640-15,670) for most of the trading day.

Aggressive profit-taking towards the close, mainly due to the weekend factor, saw the index slip to a low of 15,525 - down 158 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally ended with a marginal gain of 15 points at 15,565.

The BSE Metal and Realty indices surged around 1.5% each to 12,211 and 8183, respectively.

The market breadth was extremely negative - out of 2,660 stocks traded, 1,692 declined, 913 advanced and 55 were unchanged today.

INDEX MOVERS...

Tata Steel [Get Quote] zoomed nearly 5% to Rs 715. Larsen & Toubro soared 4% to Rs 2,475, and Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] surged 3% to Rs 923.

Mahindra & Mahindra gained 1% at Rs 823.

Reliance Communications [Get Quote], Ranbaxy [Get Quote], Grasim [Get Quote], Reliance Energy [Get Quote], HDFC [Get Quote] and TCS [Get Quote] pared gains towards the close.

...AND THE SHAKERS

 ACC plunged nearly 4% to Rs 1,107.

Bajaj Auto [Get Quote], Cipla and Ambuja Cements slipped over 2% each to Rs 2,327, Rs 201 and Rs 136, respectively.

Hindalco [Get Quote], Hindustan Unilever and Satyam [Get Quote] dropped around 1.8% each to Rs 182, Rs 194 and Rs 478, respectively.

Tata Motors [Get Quote] was down 1.4% at Rs 767.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Reliance topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 158.63 crore followed by DLF (Rs 157.21 crore), Indiabulls Real Estate [Get Quote] (Rs 152.33 crore), Tata Steel (Rs 128.34 crore) and ACC (Rs 124.41 crore).

Tata Teleservices [Get Quote] led the volume chart with trades of around 1.62 crore shares followed by Spice Tele (1.58 crore), IFCI (1.12 crore), Petronet LNG [Get Quote] (94.94 lakh) and IKF Technologies [Get Quote] (69.68 lakh).

The NSE Nifty ended up 4 points at 4,566.