Apart from the FII inflows, the market has started playing the third quarter results game, especially in the IT counters. After the initial dip in the market on Thursday, the indices recovered smartly on the back of fund-based buying. Taking the cue from there, operators and speculators also started buying and as a result of this combined buying, the market recovered from the day's low. According to a broker, even before the FII data was released officially, there was talk of net FII investments worth Rs 120 coming into the market. The data released by FII showed net investments for Wednesday at Rs 134.9 crore.

On Thursday, selective buying in main index-based counters helped the Sensex show a gain of 41.48 points. The Sensex opened at 4796.80 points and touched an intra-day peak of 4849.96 points. The close was at 4840.70 points. While the sensex showed a higher close, the number of declines were higher compared to the number of advances. While advances were at 860, the declines were at 1048. Around 206 stocks remained unchanged. At Rs 2656 crore, the trading volume too remained significantly lower compared to Wednesday's volume of close to Rs 4,500 crore on the BSE. The combined turnover on the NSE and BSE had crossed the Rs 10,000 crore mark on Wednesday amidst wild intra-day swings in key stock prices.

For the sensex, with a gain of 1.4 per cent, HLL remained the main contributor. Other index-based counters like Infosys, Reliance, SBI, MTNL, and NIIT also provided some help.

As for the software sector, the trend was mixed. Pentafour Software continued to remain in great demand. It was the first to hit the upper circuit on both the exchanges. Other software counters which showed impressive gains were: Rolta, Global Tele, Tata Elxsi, DSQ Software, SSI, Kale Consultants, Hughes Soft, Moser Baer, Orient Info, and Worldwide Tele. Satyam too showed a higher close but was comparatively weak. So was with the case Digital Equipments.

In the non-software segment, HDFC Bank, TN Petroproducts, Titan Industries, Atlas Copco, and McDowell showed impressive gains.

In the non-specified list, stocks like Jaiprakash, Kotak Mahindra, National Radio, Shyam Tele, Cosmo Films, Lupin Chemicals, Sri Krishna Petro, Padmini Poly, United Breweries, and Saw Pipes remained the star performers.