A look at the gainers and the losers (given below) of the day make thedivision look more profound. Also against a 69-point jump in the Sensex, theBSE-100 lost 45.57 points, BSE-200 10 points and the broad-based BSE-500lost a massive 23.89 points or around 10.67 per cent over its previous closeof 2237.68.

On Tuesday, on the back of a massive rally in Infosys, MTNL and ITC, theSensex closed 69 points up at 5589.85. However, ITC, a non-IT stocks, gainedaround 7 per cent after its infotech division declared doubling of itsrevenue for the current year.

For the fifth consecutive day, Infosys hit the upper circuit on both theexchanges. The impact was seen in the Sensex, which opened strong at 5674.99points - the day's high. Other software stocks like Global Tele, SatyamComputers, HFCL and Silverline also showed handsome gains.

For the Sensex, the stock which provided major boost were MTNL, ITC andBajaj Auto. These three stocks hit the upper circuit on the BSE. The day'slow for the Sensex was 5525.89 points. On the NSE, despite being the lastday of the settlement, the Nifty gained 20 points, closing at 1708.65points. While the day's low was 1684.90 points, the high was 1730.85 points.The overall sentiment was negative if one were to go by the advance-declinefigures. On the BSE, advances stood at 1061, whereas the declines for theday were at 1210. At the same time, around 159 stocks remained unchanged.The trading volume was quite high at Rs 5016 crore on the BSE. The samefigure on the NSE stood at Rs 5890 crore.

While Infosys, MTNL, ITC helped the index, Reliance, ICICI, Ranbaxy, HPCLand SBI affected the Sensex movement adversely. Reliance and SBI came underheavy selling pressure. HLL did show a rally up to Rs 2600, but failed tosustain it, and closed marginally higher. Ranbaxy, and ICICI hit the lowercircuit. HPCL and L&T also reported huge losses.

The stocks which hit the upper circuit were: Infosys, Global Tele, MTNL,Sterlite, Padmini Poly, ITC, Bajaj Auto, Cybermate, Aftek Infosys, ZenithComputers, Scanpoint, Vakrangee, Apollo Tyres, Clio Finance, Monalisa Mul,Onward Techno, Atco, Tata Finance, Jaiprakash, Surana Tele, Kotak MahindraFinance, Kopran, Twinstar Software, Leading Edge, Mastek, and KaleConsultants.

Among the major gainers were counters like HFCL, Pentamedia, Silverline, DrReddy, Usha Beltron, Crompton Greaves, Fujitsu, Datapro, CMI, Ceat Finance,Nova Petro, Tanu Leafin, GTCL Mobile, Flexo Films, Catvision, and WestermBio also recorded handsome gains.