MUMBAI:Indices were on a firm foot on Wednesday as buying activity resumed across theboard ahead of November series expiry. however volatility later in the daycan’t be ruled out.

At 12:29 pm, Bombay StockExchange’s Sensex was at 17269.62, up 138.54 points or 0.81 per cent. The30-share index hit an intra-day high of 17284.30 and low of 17124.15.

National Stock Exchange’s Nifty was at 5123.25, up 32.05 points or0.70 per cent.

“Nifty depicted signs of weakness on shortterm charts with formation of distributive patterns. Short term oscillators havebeen depicting sign of weakness for some time. Despite the divergence the indexso far continued to form higher peaks and troughs. Failure to rally past 5110would lead to increasing weakness in the index. Short term supports are placedat 5050 and below that at 5020 while 5110 remain crucial supply zone. Trenddecider level remains at 4900 and 5185 which may lead for unfolding of a biggermove,” said Edelweiss report.

BSE Midcap Index was up 0.77 percent and BSE Smallcap Index gained 0.93 per cent.

amongst thesectoral indices, BSE Oil&gas Index was up 1.76 per cent, BSE Metal Indexmoved 1.33 per cent higher and BSE Auto Index gained 1.10 per cent. BSE RealtyIndex was down 0.22 per cent.

Reliance Industries (1.90%), Mahindra& Mahindra (1.75%), Hero Honda (1.66%), Maruti Suzuki (1.61%) and ITC(1.46%) were amongst the top Sensex gainers.

DLF (-0.86%), NTPC(-0.46%), ICICI Bank (-0.42%), Tata Power (-0.34%) and Wipro (-0.14%) wereamongst the top losers.

Market breadth was positive on the BSE with1608 advances and 913 declines.