Sensex gains 496pts as banking, realty stocks rally

Despite a 550-point fall yesterday, the Sensex opened with a positive gap of 215 points at 14,007 on the back of positive cues from the global markets.
The US markets ended on a firm note yesterday, with the Dow Industrial Average gaining 266 points, and the Nasdaq advancing 55 points.
Closer home, the Nikkei rallied 208 points, and the Hang Seng surged 433 points. The Taiwan Weighted index moved up 56 points, and the Straits Times index added 39 points. The Shanghai Composite index, however, slipped 14 points today.
Our markets shrugged-off yesterday's RBI rate hike move and rallied to higher levels led by fresh buying in financial, metal and realty stocks. The Sensex rallied to a high of 14,323, and finally settled with a gain of 496 points at 14,287.
The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,724 stocks traded, 1,782 advanced, 858 declined and the rest were unchanged today.
The NSE Nifty moved up 124 points to settle at 4,314.
INDEX MOVERS...
HDFC and Tata Steel soared 8% each to Rs 2,274 and Rs 630, respectively.
Tata Power and Reliance Infrastructure zoomed 7% each to Rs 1,115 and Rs 971, respectively.
HDFC Bank rallied over 6% to Rs 1,093. Sterlite, SBI, Tata Motors, Wipro and BHEL surged around 5% each to Rs 622, Rs 1,387, Rs 416, Rs 422 and Rs 1,669, respectively.
ICICI Bank advanced 4.5% to Rs 635. Infosys, Bharti Airtel, DLF and ACC gained 4% each at Rs 1,603, Rs 810, Rs 491 and Rs 591, respectively.
Ranbaxy, TCS, Reliance and Maruti moved up 3.7% each to Rs 493, Rs 839, Rs 2,163 and Rs 589, respectively.
Grasm added 3.5% to Rs 1,852. Satyam spurted over 3% to Rs 380.
Mahindra & Mahindra, Reliance Communications and Jaiprakash Associates are up around 2.5% each at Rs 513, Rs 502 and Rs 157, respectively.
Larsen & Toubro was up 1.7% at Rs 2,589.
...AND THE SHAKERS
NTPC plunged over 4% to Rs 171, and ITC was down 1% at Rs 188.
MOST ACTIVE COUNTERS
Reliance Natural Resources topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 375 crore followed by Reliance Capital (Rs 234 crore), Larsen & Toubro (Rs 178 crore), Reliance (Rs 166.50 crore) and HDFC (Rs 145.50 crore).
Birla Cotsyn led the volume chart with trades of around 5.20 crore shares followed by Reliance Natural Resources (3.90 crore), IFCI (95 lakh), Ispat Industries (91.80 lakh) and Reliance Petroleum (83 lakh).