The Sensex opened 20 points higher at 9,035, and soon moved up to a high of 9,112 on the back of fresh buying in opening trades. The index, however, could not hold gains and slipped into red to a low of 8,978 - down 134 points from the day's high.

The index, thereafter, exhibited lacklustre movement for most of the trading day. The Sensex moved back into green and finally ended with a marginal gain of 27 points at 9,043.

The NSE Nifty ended at 2,789, up 13 points.

The BSE IT index surged 2.5% to 2,095, while the Capital Goods index was down 1% at 6,072.

The market breadth was marginally negative - out of 2,474 stocks traded, 1,300 declined, 1,071 advanced and 103 were unchanged on Thursday.

INDEX MOVERS. . .

Wipro [Get Quote] surged 5.5% to Rs 220.

Infosys [Get Quote], Grasim [Get Quote] and Maruti [Get Quote] rallied around 2.5% each to Rs 1,208, Rs 1,374 and Rs 632, respectively.

HDFC [Get Quote], Mahindra & Mahindra and TCS [Get Quote] gained around 2% each at Rs 1,393, Rs 290 and Rs 490, respectively.

Ranbaxy [Get Quote] and Reliance [Get Quote] Infrastructure moved up 1.5% each to Rs 208 and Rs 509, respectively.

NTPC, Tata Motors [Get Quote] and HDFC Bank were up around 1% each at Rs 179, Rs 135 and Rs 885, respectively.

. . .AND THE SHAKERS

Hindalco [Get Quote] shed 3.5% at Rs 40. ACC dropped 2.5% to Rs 549.

ICICI Bank [Get Quote] and Larsen & Toubro declined over 2% each to Rs 362 and Rs 641, respectively.

Hindustan Unilever and DLF slipped around 1.5% each to Rs 250 and Rs 156, respectively.

SBI [Get Quote] and BHEL were down 1% each at Rs 1,060 and Rs 1,382, respectively.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

Educomp Solutions [Get Quote] topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 235.30 crore followed by Reliance (Rs 148.85 crore), Reliance Infrastructure (Rs 139.60 crore), United Spiritis (Rs 124.60 crore) and ICICI Bank (Rs 120 crore).

Wire & Wireless led the volume chart with trades of around 2.20 crore shares followed by Cals Refineries (99.26 lakh), Spice Tele (86.10 lakh), Suzlon [Get Quote] (80.90 lakh) and Satyam [Get Quote] (79.32 lakh).