Dalal Street witnessed a mad buying scramble after the UPA's victory in the Lok Sabha elections with the benchmark BSE Sensex zooming 2,110.79 points today to touch 14,284.21 points. The dramatic rise of the index over all of just 120 seconds triggered circuit breakers twice, resulting in the halting of the day's trading — first time in India's capital market history — because of a surge. The Sensex soared 17.34 per cent to record its largest single-day gain in 17 years and reach its highest close since September 11, 2008.

The Congress's over-200 tally and the fact that the Left wasn't part of the government buoyed market sentiment — the market had hit the lower circuit-breaker when the UPA first took charge in May 2004 — but experts cautioned retail investors against plunging into equities. "Just last week we had dismal industry output and export data," said a leading fund manager. "The surge is based on the hope and expectation of breakout reforms by the Manmohan Singh government."

The 50-share NSE index leapt 17.74 per cent to 4,323.15. The combined turnover in the cash and the derivatives segment of the BSE and the NSE totaled Rs 3,103 crore compared with normal daily turnover of about Rs 80,000 crore. Most blue chips soared 15-20 per cent and investor wealth shot up by a whopping Rs 361,690 crore (US $ 73.81 billion) to Rs 41.37 lakh crore in just two minutes of trading.

The markets could be witnessing another surge tomorrow as short-sellers (or bears who sell shares without holding any to make profit when prices go down) trapped by the steep rise in prices get desperate to square up their trading positions by buying stocks. Market sources suggest there were open short positions to the tune of Rs 95,000 crore on Monday.

Short-sellers were caught off guard today by the magnitude of the rise and are hoping they get to make up tomorrow.