UNEASY CALM

The markets opened on a positive note, and touched their intraday highs within the first one and a half hours of the trading session, but within the next one hour of the trade, the markets started loosing their momentum and eventually entered the negative zone during the second half of the trading session, but ultimately recovered towards the fag end of the trading session and both Nifty and Sensex closed up by 12 & 40 points respectively. The market breadth was barely positive with 736 advances to 713 declines. On the sectoral front there was hardly any activity, except the FMCG sector, which was the standalone performer of the day. On the individual stock front Ambuja Cement, Sail, ITC, JP Associate and Jindal Steel were the star performers of the day. On the institutional side to everyone's surprise FIIs were net sellers to the tune of merely 10 crores, while the DIIs were net buyers to the tune of 254 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side the FIIs sold Index futures worth 246 crores and brought Stock futures worth 370 crores. Nifty future closed at 4852, with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options front PCR stayed at yesterday's level of 0.94, along with a slight fall in the India VIX  by 0.5%. On the Call options side, the 4800 call added the maximum open interest followed by the 4900 & 5100 calls, while the 5300 call, lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200 & 5500 calls. On the Put options side, the 5000 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5100 and 5300 puts, on the other hand the 4700 put added the maximum open interest. The activity in the F&O space indicates massive build up of shorts, and the only ray of hope, emanates from the buy figures of stocks and stock futures by the FIIs and DIIs, which indicates some value buying happening at the lower levels.

On the technical side, Nifty came very close to the resistance level of 4926 and closed once again below the crucial level of 4880. The indicators on the daily and weekly charts are still in oversold zone and there seems to be no divergence for the trend to reverse. In such a scenario, the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 4911, 4953 & 4983 on the upside and 4839, 4808 & 4767 on the downside. On the currency front, the rupee depreciated further and the USD-INR future closed at 54.61 for the day.

On the international market front, the Asian markets with a exception of Hang Seng, have closed either flat or in the green while the European markets have closed deep in the red. The U.S. stocks declined for a fifth day, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index toward a four-month low, amid weaker-than-estimated economic data and on growing concern that credit ratings for Spanish banks will be cut. On the energy futures front, the Brent crude future is trading down by 1.49% at 108.11 $/bbl and the WTI crude future is trading down by 0.28% at 92.55 $/bbl.