QUIET SESSION

The markets opened on a flat note and traded in the positive zone for the first one hour of the trade, but ultimately entered the negative zone and traded in a very narrow range, till the end of the session, and ultimately both Nifty and Sensex closed down by 13 and 21 points respectively. The market breadth was negative with 555 advances to 905 declines. The star performers of the day were Kotak Bank, TCS, ACC & Coal India. On the institutional side there was extremely low participation with FIIs turning net sellers to the tune of -348 crores and DIIs were net buyers, merely to the tune of 63 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side FIIs sold Index futures worth 348 crores and brought Stock futures worth 61 crores. Nifty May Futures closed at 5214, with 25 points premium to the spot, along-with a considerable addition of open interest. Overall there was 62.87% rollover of Nifty futures, which shows the market participants were unwilling to carry large positions to the next series, due to the extreme uncertainty surrounding the market. On the options side PCR fell to 0.9, along-with a moderate fall in the India VIX by 1.06%. On the Call options side, the May series has opened with the highest open interest at 5600 call, followed by the 5400 & 5500 calls, while on the Put options side the highest open interest is at 5000 put followed by the 5100 & 5200 puts.

On the technical side, Nifty has consolidated near the 5150 level, for the fourth consecutive day, on very low volumes. It remains to be seen, that how the market participants are going to participate at these levels, to ensure this as a valid support. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5209, 5234 & 5245 on the upside and 5173,5155 & 5137 on the downside. The USD-INR depreciated further and USD-INR futures closed at 52.90.

On the international market front the European markets have closed flat on the back of poor economic data, while the U.S. markets are trading on a flattish note on the back of mixed data such as more than expected jobless claims data and better than expected housing data. The Brent and WTI crude are trading at 119.70 and 104.45 $/bbl.