Markets off day's high

The Sensex has added 71 points to 17,536.

The Nifty is up 23 points at 5,224.

Strong December sales numbers from auto companies and surge in exports in November 2009 has helped the market to gain.
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(Updated at 1047 hrs)

Markets have slowly extended gains.

The Sensex after touching a low of 17,378, managed to rebound. The index touched a high of 17,551 - up 173 points from the day's low - and is now up 79 points at 17,544.

The Nifty is up 26 points at 5,227.

Auto stocks have surged this morning. Mahindra & Mahindra has jumped 4% to Rs 1,123. Tata Motors has added 2.3% to Rs 812 on a doubling of December sales figures. Hero Honda has moved up 1% to Rs 1,737.

Cement stocks - ACC and Grasim have advanced. ACC is up 2.3% at Rs 892 and Grasim has added 1.5% to Rs 2,515.

DLF, Wipro, Tata Steel, ONGC and SBI have gained 1% each.

However, Reliance has slipped 1.5% to Rs 1,074. The company made a block deal of 2.5 crore shares this morning.

The market breadth is positive. Out of 2,633 stocks traded 1,966 have advanced while 604 have declined.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS...

Reliance has topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 1,417.38 crore, followed by JSW Energy (Rs 149.31 crore), Onmobile Global (Rs 39.56 crore), Tata Motors (Rs 38.79 crore) and Tata Steel (Rs 35.04 crore).

The volume chart is being led by JSW Energy with trades of over 14 million shares, followed by Reliance (13.67 million), Sanraa Media (4.25 million), IFCI (3.69 million) and Karuturi Global (3.58 million).