An evening walk down Dalal Street

After starting the week on a negative note, the market on Tuesday looked to reclaim its positive momentum from last week, backed by sharp gains in midcaps. The Sensex managed to end the day almost 200 points higher, while the Nifty managed to end above 11,000-mark.

Investors in equities are likely to have placed bets on lower crude prices and a stronger rupee, which boosted oil marketing companies as well as banks, among others. Bond yields too witnessed some softening.

But strength in the market was largely on the back of a huge surge in midcap index, which managed to end over 2 percent higher.

Financials, particularly PSU banks, as well as pharmaceuticals, metals as well as energy names found favour among investors. State Bank of India, Sun Pharma, HPCL and IOC were the top gainers, while HUL, IndusInd Bank and Tech Mahindra were the top losers.

The Sensex closed higher by 196.19 points or 0.54% at 36519.96, while the Nifty rose 71.10 points or 0.65% at 11008.00. The market breadth was positive as 1443 shares advanced, against a decline of 1101 shares, while 173 shares were unchanged.

"In a volatile trading session, the equity benchmark indices traded in a narrow range in the first half of the trading session. However, healthy buying was witnessed in the second half and the Nifty Index ended the day with gains of 0.7% to close at 11,008 levels. The broader market indices outperformed the benchmark with BSE Midcap and BSE Smallcap ending with gains of 2.1% and 1.1% respectively," Jayant Manglik, President, Religare Broking, said in a statement.