Sensex rebounds from 7-mth lows, ends 188 pts up

Helped by heavy buying in last two hours of trade, the BSE benchmark Sensex bounced back from seven-month low levels to close 188 points up on Wednesday, snapping a five-day losing streak on robust gains in HDFC, Infosys, TCS and ICICI Bank shares.

Helped by heavy buying in last two hours of trade, the BSE benchmark Sensex bounced back from seven-month low levels to close 188 points up on Wednesday, snapping a five-day losing streak on robust gains in HDFC, Infosys, TCS and ICICI Bank shares.

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Tracking overnight gains in US market, the 30-share Sensex opened with gain of over 100 points but lost momentum slowly as selling picked up pace.

However, heavy buying in bluechips in the last two hours of trading tracking firm opening in Europe helped Sensex close at 18,414.45, a rise of 187.97 points or 1.03%.

Today's gain helped the index snap a five-session losing trend where it had tumbled by 814.47 points of 4.28%. Similarly, the NSE 50-share Nifty also shot up by 63.60 points or 1.16% to 5,558.70. According to HDFC Securities, Nifty was "oversold" in the short term and there was a "bounce due".

IT, Banking, Capital Goods and Realty counters attracted buying. Brokers said investors felt the recent fall in share prices was overdone and picked up fundamentally strong stocks available at existing lower levels.

Overall, investor wealth surged by Rs 50,000 crore as FIIs pumped in fresh funds after selling stocks worth Rs 1,700 crore in the last few sessions, traders said.

In 30-share Sensex pack, 21 stocks gained led by Infosys, Reliance Industries, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, HDFC Ltd, L&T, Bajaj Auto, Bharti Airtel and Cipla.

IT stocks spurted before the Infosys quarterly results on April 12, lifting the sectoral index by 2.05%.

Globally, Asian stocks ended higher, pushing the benchmark regional equities gauge higher for the third day.