The Sensex, which kicked off with a positive gap of 34 points at 5,448, displayed positive trends through the session. After making decent strides in the opening session, the index breached the 5,500-mark in late morning trades on the back of sustained buying in old and new economy stocks.

While the sentiment remained bullish till the end, the markets witnessed an unprecedented buying support towards the closing hours, which saw the index spurt to an intra-day high of 5,552.

The Sensex, finally signed off the last day of the trading week with a gain of 114 points at 5,529. The Nifty, too, rose sharply to end at 1,747 - up 44 points.

Infosys rallied sharply on the back of sustained buying support to end with a decent surge of 2.59% (Rs 134) at Rs 5,300. While Wipro zoomed 3.55% (Rs 49) to Rs 1,428, Satyam rose 4.65% (Rs 14) to Rs 321.

Reliance advanced 2% (Rs 10) to Rs 525. HLL added 1.82% (Rs 3) to Rs 148. ITC, however, ended marginally weak at Rs 1,070.

SBI vaulted 4.72% (Rs 27) to Rs 593. BHEL moved up 2.70% (Rs 15) to Rs 563. HPCL, however, closed down a tad at Rs 486. MTNL also ended weak with a rupee loss at Rs 123.

Grasim (up Rs 40 or 4% to Rs 1,042), Gujarat Ambuja (up Rs 11 or 3.81% to Rs 299) and ACC (up Rs 9 or 3.74% to Rs 255) ended with steep gains. L&T was up Rs 2 at Rs 575.

HDFC at Rs 612 (up Rs 9 or 1.56%), HDFC Bank at Rs 375 (up Rs 11 or 3.14%), Reliance Energy at Rs 755 (up Rs 19 or 2.63%), Tata Power at Rs 370 (up Rs 10 or 2.78%) ended north-bound on wide-spread buying support. Zee surged 4.37% (Rs 5) to Rs 125.

Hindalco, however, ended weak with a loss of Rs 5 at Rs 1,216.

ICICI Bank, which fixed its price band between Rs 255 and Rs 295 per share for its public issue of 3050 crore, notched up 5.56% gains (Rs 15) to Rs 285.

Tata Motors moved up 2.92% (Rs 13) to Rs 466. Bajaj and Hero Honda were up a per cent each at Rs 871 (up Rs 11) and Rs 470 (up Rs 6), respectively.

Ranbaxy clocked a per cent gain (Rs 9) to close at Rs 904. While Cipla, too, gained a per cent (Rs 10) to Rs 1,137, Dr. Reddy's ended off-highs with a modest gain of Rs 5 at Rs 975.