Bulls are back in form. The benchmark Sensex zoomed by 198 points on Wednesday, thanks to a rally in interest rate-sensitive banking, auto and real-estate shares, telecom stocks and index heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) in a volatile trading session.

The Sensex surge materialised in the last one hour of trading. After a strong debut on higher Asian markets, the Sensex had pared gains shortly, before recovering again in mid-morning trade. It came off higher level in the afternoon trade, when the Sensex wiped out almost its entire gains. The market once again bounced back from the lower level in late afternoon trade.

The Sensex closed with a gain of 1.4 per cent to settle at 14,127.31, its highest closing in about three weeks since April 26, 2007. The S&P CNX Nifty advanced 50.65 points to 4170.95.

Bank stocks extended this week’s gains, with the BSE bank index rising 3.1 per cent. All the sectoral indices on BSE barring IT clocked gains today.

The BSE IT sector lost 0.5 per cent on rupee’s rise against the dollar. IT stocks were also hit by reports that two US Senators had claimed that Indian IT firms were misusing the H-1B visa programme. A strong rebound on the domestic bourses had materialised last month as the initial Q4 results were strong and Infosys issued a strong guidance. From 12,455.37 on April 2, 2007, the Sensex had surged 1,773.51 points (14.2 per cent) to 14,228.88 on April 26, 2007. It has since then turned volatile.

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