Brokers said despite the session being the last one for the current settlement on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the sentiment was boosted following fresh interest shown by FIIs in power, petroleum and refinery shares. The local operators were caught on the wrong foot by the short positions. ``They were forced to cover this at a higher level in the wake of poor floating stocks. This factor boosted the sentiment,'' said a broker.

Reliance and IPCL attracted fresh buying following a hike in polymer prices. BPCL and HPCL also shot up after an increase in petroleum product prices. Reflecting the uptrend, out of 148 traded specified scrips, 106 scrips advanced, 38 declined and four remained unchanged. The rally in select scrips was so strong that from the 106 advanced scrips, 25 sharesfinished at the day's permissible limit of eight per cent.

Sensex firmed up from opening level of 4073.03 to post a new 52-high at 4130.37 during the mid-session. However, Sensex declined to the day's low of 4052.66 before closing at 4085.11 with a net gain of 45.72 points or 1.13 per cent from yesterday's close of 4039.39. The BSE-100 index also shot up by 22.46 points to close at 1753.60 from last close of 1731.14.

SBI clocked the highest turnover of Rs 207.26 of the total volume of business of Rs 1796.82 crore and the scrip firmed up by another Rs 6.90 to Rs 255 on fresh support. Pentafour Software gained Rs 18.00 at Rs 1111, Reliance Rs 6 at Rs 185, Satyam Rs 41 at Rs 1471 and Tisco Rs 1.60 at Rs 123.50. ITC, however, declined by Rs 2 to Rs 1096 and Hindustan Lever by Rs 27 to Rs 2213 on profit-taking.