The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 45 points at 16,891, and soon touched a new all-time intra-day high of 16,928 -- just 72 points shy of the 17,000-mark.

Profit-taking at higher levels saw the index pare gains and drop into red to a low of 16,677 -- down 251 points from the day's high. However, the index rebounded into the positive zone on the back of fresh buying at lower levels.

The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 54 points at a record 16,900. The BSE Oil & Gas index gained 1.3 per cent at 9778. The NSE Nifty ended at 4,938, up 7 points.

The Realty index, however, dropped 3 per cent to 9085. The market breadth was negative -- out of 2,816 stocks traded, 1,654 declined, 1,111 advanced and 51 were unchanged on Tuesday.

Index Movers...

HDFC Bank [Get Quote] soared nearly 4 per cent to Rs 1,398. Hindalco [Get Quote] surged 3 per cent to Rs 168. Bharti Airtel [Get Quote] rallied over 2% to Rs 965. Reliance and Ranbaxy [Get Quote] moved up 1.8 per cent each to Rs 2,400 and Rs 424, respectively.

Hindustan Unilever advanced 1.5 per cent to Rs 227. Cipla and Maruti [Get Quote] were up over 1 per cent each to Rs 169 and Rs 991, respectively.

...And The Shakers 

Mahindra & Mahindra plunged 2.6 per cent to Rs 763. Bajaj Auto [Get Quote] slipped over 2 per cent to Rs 2,519. SBI [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote] dropped 1.6 per cent each to Rs 1,804 and Rs 436, respectively.

Larsen & Toubro is down over 1 per cent to Rs 2,865.

Value & Volume Toppers

IFCI topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 449 crore followed by Reliance Natural Resources [Get Quote] (Rs 441.60 crore), J P Hydro-power (Rs 275.30 crore), Reliance Petro (Rs 266.60 crore) and Reliance Energy [Get Quote] (Rs 238.50 crore). Reliance Natural Resources led the volume chart with trades of around 4.72 crore shares followed by IFCI (4.42 crore), Ispat Industries [Get Quote] (4.33 crore), J P Hydro-power (3.70 crore) and Tata Tele (2.76 crore).