Market near day's high

The market firmed up in mid-noon deals and now trading near the day's high on the back of unabated buying in Pharma shares.

The market firmed up in mid-noon deals and now trading near the day's high on the back of unabated buying in Pharma shares. Select auto and FMCG stocks too are lending strong support to the indices.

The Sensex is now up 122 points at 28,382, and the Nifty has gained 34 points at 8,620.

The CNX Midcap index has advanced 0.3 per cent to 13,200, while the Smallcap index has soared over a per cent to 5,779.

The CNX Pharma index surged nearly 3.5 per cent to 13,585. The FMCG index has rallied nearly 2 per cent to 20,527, and the Auto index has spurted nearly a per cent to 8,787.

The breadth is also fairly positive - out of 1,721 stocks traded on the NSE, 1,026 have advanced and 479 have declined so far.

Sun Pharma remains the major gainer in the Nifty-50 space. The stock has soared 6 per cent to Rs. 1,146.

ONGC, Mahindra & Mahindra and Cipla have rallied over 3 per cent each to Rs. 316, Rs. 1,240 and Rs. 731, respectively.

Cairn India, Tata Motors, ITC, ACC, Kotak Bank, Hindustan Unilever, Idea Cellular, Tech Mahindra and Dr.Reddy's are the other major gainers.

On the other hand, HCL Technologies and Wipro continue to languish at lower levels, with losses of 2.5 per cent each at Rs. 918 and Rs. 618, respectively.

Tata Steel has shed 1.7 per cent at Rs. 318. Reliance and HDFC have declined 1.5 per cent each.

As many as 61 stocks have registered a fresh 52-week high today. Prominent among these are Advanta, Aurobindo Pharma AXISCADES Engineering Technologies, Bharat Forge, Cadila Healthcare, Century Textiles, Chambal Fertilisers, Fortis Healthcare, Gillette India, Gujarat Pipavav Defence, Hester Biosciences, ICRA, Idea Cellular, Indoco Remedies, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, Lupin, NCC, Pfizer, Punjab Chemicals, RPG Life Sciences, SKF India, Timken India, Transformers And Rectifiers (India), WABCO India and Zen Technologies.

On the flip side, 13 stocks fell to a new 52-week low. Genus Paper & Boards, Glodyne Technoserve, Goenka Diamond and Jewels, JCT Electronics, Manaksia Aluminium Company and Raj Oil Mills were some of the notable stocks