The Sensex opened 35 points lower at 15,480. The index touched a day's low of 15,314 in afternoon trades owing to weakness in realty and consumer durables stocks.

Fresh buying in IT and technology stocks helped the index rebound into the positive zone, and touched day's high of 15,815 - up 501 points from day's low.

The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 255 points at 15,770.

The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,714 stocks traded, 1,397 declined, 1,240 advanced and 77 were unchanged on Thursday.

The NSE Nifty ended with a gain of 91 points at 4,677.

Index Movers . . .

ONGC [Get Quote] zoomed 7.5% at Rs 953. Wipro [Get Quote] soared 6.2% to Rs 528. Infosys [Get Quote] surged 5.9% at Rs 1,980.

Reliance Infrastructure gained 5.7% at Rs 1,131, while NTPC moved up 5.6% to Rs 167. Satyam [Get Quote] surged 5.5% to Rs 512.

Jaiprakash Associates [Get Quote] was trading at Rs 206 - up 3.7%.

Hindustan Unilever and Grasim [Get Quote] advanced 3.2% each to Rs 238 and Rs 2,246, respectively.

Tata Steel [Get Quote] and ICICI Bank [Get Quote] inched 3.1% each at Rs 841 and Rs 781, respectively.

ITC was up 2.9% to Rs 222, and TCS [Get Quote] gained 2.6% to Rs 983.

HDFC Bank [Get Quote] added 2.2% to Rs 1,243. Maruti [Get Quote] advanced 2.1% at Rs 762.

Hindalco [Get Quote], SBI [Get Quote] and Cipla were the other prominent gainers.

. . .And The Shakers

DLF plunged 3% to Rs 538. Reliance slipped 2.6% to Rs 2,248.

Ambuja Cements declined 1.9% at Rs 86. Tata Motors [Get Quote] and BHEL dropped 1.8% each at Rs 533 and Rs 1,445, respectively.

Larsen & Toubro was down 1.6% at Rs 2,721.

Most Active Counters

Reliance led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 418.91 crore followed by Anu's Laboratories (Rs 353.59 crore), Reliance Capital [Get Quote] (Rs 266.36 crore), Gokul Refoils (Rs 210.66 crore) and ONGC (Rs 204.36 crore).