The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark index, Sensex rallied smartly on Friday on strong Asian cues.

Momentum in banking and auto stocks allowed the index to climb to a high of 17,971 before closing at 17,933.14 with a gain of 218.74 points. The broad-based index at the National Stock Exchange, Nifty too gained 57 points during the day's trade to close at 5,361.

Among sectoral indices, the BSE Bankex, Auto and Oil & Gas ruled the day with gains of over one per cent each. Smaller BSE listed companies too matched their bigger counterparts in terms of performance as the BSE Smallcap index rose 1.27 per cent on Friday.

Tata Motors and HDFC remained the top performing Sensex constituents gaining nearly 4.5 per cent each. While Tata Motors climbed to Rs. 808 per share, HDFC shut shop at Rs. 2,644 a share. Many others including HDFC Bank, BHEL, Hero Honda and Sterlite Industries gained between two and three per cent.

Though the market breadth remained largely positive a few large cap companies, mostly from the IT domain, failed to lure buyers. Both TCS and Wipro closed 0.5 per cent down. However, the major Sensex losers were Bharti Airtel and Hindustan Unilever. At close they both were down by nearly 1.5 per each.