Sensex ends above 20500; broader indices outperform

Equity benchmarks closed last session of the year 2010 on a positive note, led by support from financial, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, realty, telecom, auto, select metal and power companies' shares. Reliance Industries and HUL also led the support. The Sensex gained for third consecutive day today and settled above 20,500 level.

Hemen Kapadia of chartpundit.com feels 6185 is an important level on Nifty. "Monday is the time when the markets could just about peak for the time being, correct a bit and after that on the rebound when we take out 6185, then we are testing 6350. If we take out 6350 which seems like a possibility at this point in time I won't be surprised if we would see a 8% to 10% upside in the next 3 to 4 months after that," he said.

Manas Jaiswal, Technical Analyst, manasjaiswal.com is upbeat that Nifty can test the November high of 6308 as it has shown clear breakout of flag pattern in the last six to seven trading sessions.

However, the sell-off was seen in shares like ONGC, NTPC, JSPL, TCS, Sterlite, BHEL, Dr Reddy's Labs, Infosys, Hero Honda and HDFC, which capped the gains.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 20,509.09, up 120.02 points or 0.59% and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 32.65 points or 0.54% to settle at 6,134.50. The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices went up 1% each.

Heavyweight SBI jumped 2.3%; sources said the bank might announce extension of teaser home loan scheme upto March 2011. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, IDFC and PNB gained 0.5-2.3%. DLF from realty space went up 1.6%.