At 11:55 hours IST, the Nifty touched the 5,100 mark after a month. Reliance Industries (RIL) was the leading counter with a gain of 3%, the company has made a preliminary, non-binding cash offer to buy Dutch company LyondellBasell (LB). There were reports that the company is planning USD 10 billion offer.

ITC gained 2.7% and hit an all-time high of Rs 268. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and ONGC were the other leading counters.

Brokerages views on RIL - CLSA in their report said the deal would be positive if enterprise value of LB is below USD 12 billion. However, Kotak Institutional report said there would be no real synergies between RIL and LB; they retained sell rating with a target of Rs 1,750/share.

On the sectoral front, auto, metal, power, banking (except SBI), cement and select pharma stocks were seeing buying interest. However, selling in Bharti Airtel (down 4%), Reliance Communications (down 1%), Idea Cellular (down 1.7%), Infosys, SBI and Hindalco (down 2%) limited the gains to some extent.

The Sensex went up 139 points to 17,160 and the Nifty rose 48 points to 5,100. The market breadth strengthened a bit further; about 1,767 shares advanced while 1,010 shares declined on the BSE. Nearly 655 shares were unchanged.

The Nifty November future was trading with 7 points premium. Among the broader indices, the BSE Midcap Index was up 0.4% and Smallcap up 1%.

In the midcap space, GMDC, BF Utilities, HMT, MRF and Aurobindo Pharma gained 6-8% while KGN Industries slipped 10%. Balrampur Chini, J&K Bank, Shree Renuka and Info Edge lost 3-4%.

In the smallcap space, Tata Sponge Iron, Mastek, Prime Securities, Indian Metals and Sahara One went up 7-12% while PVP Ventures, Webel SL Energy, Dhampur Sugar, Raj Oil Mills and Kalyani Steels declined 3-4.7%.

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