In a highly choppy trade, the stock market on Thursday ended with a gain of 65 points in the benchmark index, Sensex, powered by recovery of its global peers and buying in the heavy-weights amid easing inflation.
     
Despite opening firm, the Bombay Stock Exchange's 30-share index, Sensex, witnessed an extremely volatile session and finally managed to settle with a gain of 65.50 points or 0.33 percent at 19,930.64.
     
Similarly, the National Stock Exchange's wide-based Nifty too saw a similar trend and finished at 5,998.80, reflecting a gain of 10.10 percent from previous close.
     
Back home, fall in food inflation to 10.3 percent for the week ended November 6 helped in the upswing.

Salient stocks

Metals saw a handsome recovery and emerged as the best performer among the 13 sectoral indices with the aluminium giant Hindalco and the copper producer Sterlite Industries gaining 4.86 percent and 2.69 percent respectively.
     
"The markets around the globe have recovered from the lower levels with the recovery seen in the commodity space as well, due to which buying interest was seen primarily in the metals and oil marketing companies," said Geojit BNP Paribas in a note.
     
IT bellwether Infosys Technologies, which enjoys the maximum weightage on Sensex after RIL, contributed the most to the broader market recovery with a gain of 1.07 percent at Rs 3,004.15.
     
Besides, the auto giant Hero Honda soared by 5.46 percent, coming out as a winner, on the news of a foreign brokerage upgrading the stock from 'neutral' to 'outperform'.      

"The speculations about the private equity players meeting the company's promoters to clinch a deal, also fuelled the rally in the stock," CNI Research CMD Kishore P Ostwal said.
     
The country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki and the auto major Tata Motors too rose by 2.09 percent and 2.02 percent respectively. Mahindra & Mahindra also witnessed a gain of 0.31 percent.
     
Of the 30 Sensex components, 19 ended the day on a smart note, while the rest finished in the red with Reliance Communications shedding the most on 2G spectrum probe concerns.
     
However, another telecom giant Bharti Airtel bucked the trend and surged 3.77 percent on value buying in the stock.
     
Besides RCom, another major laggard was the private sector lender ICICI Bank with a loss of 3.14 percent, which suffered on the media reports that the bank is under RBI scanner for its deal with Indiabulls Real Estate (IBREL).

The bank had issued a guarantee to NTC on behalf of IBREL for its transaction with Bharat Mill.
     
Banking players HDFC Bank and SBI too played the spoil-sport and slipped by 0.82 per cent and 0.55 per cent respectively.
     
Other smart gainers on Sensex included -- L&T (1.56 per cent), DLF (1.56 per cent), Cipla (4.38 per cent) and ITC (1.35 per cent).
     
Another stock in the limelight today was SKS Microfinance which tanked nearly 20 per cent after the company warned that its reduced collections in Andhra Pradesh may hit its profitability.
     
On the global front, despite the concerns of China raising the interest rates to curb inflation, the country's benchmark index Shanghai gained nearly one per cent, while Japan's Nikkei ended with a gain of 2.06 per cent.      

European markets were also trading firm in the afternoon trade.