The BSE-benchmark-Sensex gained for the third day in a row after an extremely volatile session as investors took calculative steps ahead of F&O expiry on 29th April 2009.

In the morning, the domestic market opened on negative note tracking weak cues from the Asian markets. But during mid-session, the market gathered decent momentum to touch day's high on significant buying across the board.

However, despite sharp come back, market was not able to hold the same impulse and slipped again, on profit booking.

The BSE Sensex closed higher by 42.80 points at 11,371.85 whereas NSE Nifty ended down by 10.75 points at 3,470. The Sensex touched intraday high of 11,492.10 and intraday low of 11,176.55.

Further, BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps also settled the day with losses of 15.81 and 41.12 points at 3,584.28 and 4,027.14 respectively.

On Sectoral front, Bank (+2.41%), Capital Goods (+1.57%), HC (+0.95%) stocks have attracted most of the buying. However, counters like Consumer Durable (-2.77%), Reality (-2.42%), Power (-1.00%), PSU (-0.96%), Metal (-0.95%) and Teck (-0.71%) stocks witnessed most of selling from their baskets.

In today's trading session, gainers from the BSE Sensex pack were ICICI Bank (8.20%), Sterlite Industries (4.39%), Wipro Ltd (4.12%), TCS Ltd (3.58%), JP Associates (3.58%), Sun Pharma (2.87%), L&T Ltd (2.48%), BHEL (1.91%) and ITC Ltd (1.55%).

While, the losers from the BSE Sensex pack are Ranbaxy Lab (4.61%), Reliance Infra (3.90%), RCom (3.75%), HUL (3%), ACC Ltd (2.98%), Tata Steel (2.87%), Hindalco (2.37%), Tata Power (2.27%), SBI (1.96%) and Tata Motors (1.45%).