The Sensex closed on a firm note on Wednesday, supported by heavy buying in IT stocks and a few old economy majors.

The 30-share index, which hit an intraday high of 15,831.49 during afternoon trade, marked its closure after gaining 81.38 points at 15,769.85. On the other hand, the broad based Nifty settled the day at 4680.85, up 21.50 points.

Several midcap and smallcap stocks rallied sharply and closed on a positive note. The BSE Midcap index surged 1.10%, whereas the Smallcap index closed 1.97% up as against its last closing mark.

Some short-covering prior to F&O expiry also added to the positive closure.
 
On sectoral front, BSE IT zoomed 3.35 per cent, Teck increased 2.50 per cent, Realty surged 1.23 per cent and Healthcare gained 0.80 per cent, while FMCG was down by 1.01 per cent.

The market breadth continues to be extremely positive - out of 2,867 stocks traded, 1,943 advanced while 851 declined.

The major gainers in the 30-share index were Infosys Tech, Sterlite Industries (India), TCS, Wipro, RCom and Tata Motors.

On the other hand, the major losers in the Sensex included HUL, HDFC Bank, Hero Honda Motors, Grasim Ind, Maruti Suzuki India and ITC.

While commenting on the market viewpoint for Thursday (Aug 27), Alex Mathew, head, research centre – Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services stated that the volatility is expected to rule the stock markets as they are nearing the F&O expiry.

He added that the major resistance for Nifty is at 4,740.

He also said that if it (Nifty) trades and closes above this level for two days then investors may see market moving up further.

Recapping Wednesday’s market performance, he said, “The markets had opened on a positive note on the back of positive cues from the global markets but entered a volatile session soon and traded with many ups and downs before slipping to the intraday low in the morning session. In the second part of the day, the markets gained further support at lower levels, moved up, and finally closed for the day with good gains but off the day`s high. On the domestic front, the markets moved up initially on the back of positive global cues but soon buying interest in IT and power stocks supported the markets. Stocks in the media segment like the TV-18, Zee News, IBN-18 etc also moved up. Volatility in the market remained high ahead of August F&O expiry with the rollover figures also showing decent trend. During the afternoon session India`s Infrastructure output came in which was at 1.8% for the month of July 2009 much lower than a revised 6.8% growth in June 2009. Also the Finance Minister had commented the other day that the country is in the right path to achieve 9% growth and signs of which has started to show up. In the afternoon session, the markets sailed back as the European markets gained strength after opening lower. The cue from the US index futures were also giving lower level support to our markets which closed for the day with Sensex up 0.52% and Nifty up 0.46%.``