Coming as a relief for investors after huge losses suffered during 2011, the stock market barometer Sensex today posted a 421-point rally, helped by strong gains in blue-chip stocks like ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries and Infosys.

The upsurge was noticed across all segments and sectors and all the indices closed in the positive territory with gains ranging from 1-5 per cent.

In the process, the total investor wealth, measured in terms of cumulative value of all listed stocks, grew by Rs 1,52,067 crore today to Rs 5,503,947.6 crore, as per the BSE data.

Including the gains of about Rs 3,000 crore in yesterday's trade, the first trading session of 2012, the investors' wealth has grown by about Rs 1.55 lakh crore in just two trading sessions of the new year.

The market had suffered huge losses in 2011, when the Sensex fell by about 25 per cent or more than 5,000 points, while the investors wealth declined by about Rs 19.46 lakh crore.

A number of large blue-chip companies, including the likes of Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank, had suffered heavy losses in their market valuations last year.

However, almost all the market leaders today posted smart gains and M&M and Hero Motocorp were the only two Sensex stocks to close in the red.

DLF and Tata Steel gained more than 6 per cent each, while gains were over 5 per cent in shares of Jindal Steel, Tata Motors, Tata Power and L&T. Besides, BHEL, Coal India, SBI, Wipro, Sterlite Industries and ICICI Bank rose by over 4 per cent each.

Stocks like Bharti Airtel, JP Associates, Hindalco, HDFC Bank, RIL, Infosys, HDFC and Cipla gained over 2 per cent.

At the end of today's trade, RIL was the country's most valued company (Rs 236,972.10 crore), closely followed by TCS at second position (Rs 234,220.64).