Despite high volatility, most key indices including the Sensex and Nifty managed to touch their all-time highs on Wednesday mainly on the back of heavy buying in the realty and banking stocks at the fag end of the trading session.

In absence of any cues from the Asian markets, most of which were closed for trading on account of a holiday, the domestic market depended on the cues emerging from the home front.

The 30-share Sensex touched a high of 20,529.48 points before settling at 20,465.30 points, a gain of 164.59 points or 0.81% from its previous close. The broader Nifty touched a high of 6,197 points before closing the day at 6,179.40 points, a rise of 35.05 points or 0.57% compared to its previous close.

Even the BSE Mid and Small cap indices erased their all-time highs achieved on December 31 by reaching new peaks with BSE Mid cap index touching 10,096.13 points and BSE Small cap reaching 13,998.01 points before closing at 10,058.94 points and 13,908.97 points respectively.

Dealers said hints from finance minister P Chidambaram to moderate taxes on Tuesday kept the sentiments positive among the investors and due to this the overall markets breadths remained positive with 2,010 stocks advancing as against 919 stocks which declined and 19 stocks remained unchanged at the BSE.

Apurva Shah, head of research, Prabhudas Lilladher, said ?The markets were choppy in the early hours of trade. However, selective buying across the board helped them end in positive territory.

However, issues like RBI allowing short-selling to the FIIs and Sebi?s proposed regulation to curb short-term profit making by companies insiders traders would take some time before impacting the markets?.

On the derivatives segment, short covering at low levels and taking fresh long positions helped Nifty futures of the near month contract close in premium of 45.3 points at 6,224.70 points with respect to its spot price. The open interest increased by 9.21% to 3.58 crore on Wednesday.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, BSE Bankex led the way gaining 360.18 points or 3.13% to close at 11,870.31 points followed by BSE Realty, which gained 381.78 points or 2.93% to close at 13,419.67 points.