Market near day's high; Nifty up 100 points

Both the benchmarks are curretly trading near their day's high levels

Market conitnued its surge in morning trades and becnhmarks are near their day's high on sustained buying in heavyweights like ITC, RIL, L&T and ICICI Bank.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up  343.54 points or 1.68% at 20,749 levels and the broader 50-share CNX NIFTY was trading at 6,154 levels up almost 98 points or 1.6%.  

Broader markets continued to remain strong with the midcap index up 1% and the smallcap index gained 0.8%.

Meanwhile, UBS downgraded India to "neutral" from "overweight" and upgraded China to "overweight", saying Plenum reforms will likely cause China to outperform Asia ex-Japan for the next few months.

"We still like India - our thesis of weak capex equals higher return on capital still holds. But it is a longer-term theme and for now we believe a Chinese re-rating is likely to steal the limelight," UBS said in a report.

On the sectoral front, rate sensitives continue to be the top gainers with Bankex, Capital goods and Realty indices gaining 1.6-2.3%.

IT, Oil & Gas, Teck, FMCG and Power indices were the other sectoral gainers, up 1-1.5%.

Coal India, Sesa Sterlite and Tata Motors down 0.2-0.8% were the only scrips in red among the Sensex-30.

ICICI Bank, L&T, HDFC Bank, Wipro and RIL up 2-3% were the top gainers.

ITC, Tata Steel, ONGC, TCS, Bharti Airtel, SBI, Sun Pharma and HDFC up 1.2-1.8% were the other prominent gainers.

Among other stocks, Elder Pharmaceuticals has soared 8% to Rs 317 on reports that French drug maker Sanofi SA is close to acquiring the Mumbai-based pharmaceuticals company.

Amara Raja Batteries rallied 8% to Rs 341, also its 52-week high on BSE after reporting a strong 19% year-on-year growth in net profit at Rs 95 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2013 on back of healthy operational performance.

The market breadth was very positive owing to the strength in the broader markets. 1230 stocks advanced while 526 stocks declined on the BSE.