LACKLUSTURE

The markets opened on a dull note,and remained sluggish throughout the day and moved from the positive to the negative territory many a times and ultimately both Nifty and the Sensex closed marginally up by 19 and 56 points respectively. The market breadth was evenly balanced with 841 advances to 634 declines. As expected, before tomorrow's monetary policy review, with a exception of Bank Nifty, there was hardly any movement in any sector. The top three performers of the day were Tata Motors, Axis Bank and JP Associates. On the institutional side, the FIIs were net sellers to the tune of 509 crores, while the DIIs were net buyers to the tune of 218 crores in the cash market. On the derivatives side, FIIs sold Index futures worth 333 crores and brought stock futures worth 102 crores. Nifty futures closed at 5248, with 22 points premium to the spot and a moderate fall in open interest. On the options side the PCR decreased to 0.92, along with a moderate fall in the India VIX. On the Call options side, the 5300 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200 & 5400 calls, on the Put option side, the 5300 put option added the maximum open interest, while the 5400 put shed the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200 put. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates some unwinding of shorts, as well as moderate increase in long positions just ahead of tomorrow's big event. On the technical side, not much has changed since yesterday and all the indicators are still in sell mode. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5257, 5269 & 5312 on the upside and 5195, 5164 & 5148 on the downside. The European markets managed to close in the green, on the back of better than expected trade balance figures, while the U.S. markets are trading flat on the back of mixed economic and corporate data.