ANXIOUS

The markets opened on a very flat note and touched their intraday lows within the first two hours of the trading session, but recovered their entire losses till the start of the second half of the trading session and continued to trade within a range for the next two hours and with just one and a half hours left for the end of the day’s session the markets made a almost vertical ascent and touched their intraday highs and ultimately closed near their highest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 23 and 80 points respectively. The market breadth was evenly balanced with 745 advances to 731 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the IT, Auto & Midcap sectors. On the individual stocks front, Bajaj Auto, was the biggest gainer followed by Tata Power, Sesa Goa, Jindal Steel, & Maruti. On the institutional side, the FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 276 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 166 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the FIIs were net sellers in both Index and Stock futures, to the tune of 273 and 270 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5224, with 8 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the options side, the PCR increased to 0.94, along with a fall in the India VIX by 1.91%. On the Call option side, the 5200 call lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500, 5100 & 5300 calls, on the other hand the 5400 call added the maximum open interest. On the Put options side, 5000 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5400 & 4800 puts, on the other hand 5100 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 5200 put. The entire activity in the cash as well as F&O space, indicates the marginal gains in the markets were mainly a result of short covering.

On the technical side, Nifty breached the crucial level of 5178 on an intraday basis, but managed to close above the 5200 mark. This up-move is mainly in anticipation of a favorable outcome on the government’s policy front. The technical indicators are still in a sell mode and the next two sessions will determine the direction of the markets. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5236, 5256 & 5269 on the upside and 5182, 5151 & 5128 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee touched its lowest level of the week, tracking losses in the euro as well as dollar demand  from defence and oil firms. The rupee finally settled at 55.48, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.49 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed in the red, while the European markets have closed on a strongly positive note and the U.S. markets are also trading in the green on the back of  better than expected housing starts data & corporate results. On the energy futures front, the Brent and WTI crude futures are trading on a strongly positive note at 105.19 & 90.08 $/bbl respectively, on the back of fall in the weekly U.S. crude oil inventories and the Natural gas future is trading with a massive gain of 6.03% at 2.96 $/MMBtu, after a unexpected fall in the weekly U.S. gasoline inventories.