Stocks surged on Wednesday as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) went in for a status-quo in key rates and maintained its accommodative stance. The sharp rally saw the benchmark Sensex rising over 1016 points even as investor wealth climbed Rs 3.96 lakh crore.

While the gains were led by financials, auto and real estate stocks, market circles said that investor attention will now shift towards upcoming macro-economic data such as retail inflation and industrial production.

Though the sentiment has improved on expectations that the Omricon variant may not significantly derail the global economic growth, experts caution that markets could remain volatile in the coming days. The dovishness in the RBI statements came as a positive surprise, leading to an upmove in interest rate sensitive counters.

The 30-share Sensex, which began the day in green at 58158.56, hit an intra-day high of 58702.65 — a gain of 1069 points. It later settled at 58649.68, thus showing a rise of 1016.03 points. In two days, the index has jumped over 1900 points. Similarly, the Nifty ended at 17469.75 — higher by 293.05 points. Shares of Bajaj Finance gained the most in the Sensex stocks as it shot up by 3.67 per cent to Rs 7,363.45.