LACKLUSTER

The markets opened on a firm note, but subsequently lost their momentum till the end of the first half of the trading session, and continued to trade in the negative zone for the next two hours, but ultimately recovered most of their losses, to close almost flat till the end of the session. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 15 and 37 points respectively. The market breadth was positive with 956 advances to 525 declines. On the sectoral front, the Metal sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Banking and the Midcap sectors. On the individual stocks front, Sterlite Industries, Sesa Goa, Jindal Steel, JP Associates & Bharti Airtel, managed to outperform the markets. On the institutional side, the FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 239 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 162 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the FIIs were net buyers, both in the Index and Stock futures to the tune of 249 & 67 crores respectively. Nifty future closed at 5323, with 21 points premium to the spot along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options side, the PCR marginally increased to 1.07, along with a fall in the India VIX by 1.56%. On the Call options side, the 5400 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 & 5500 calls, while on the Put option side, the 5300 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200 & 5000 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space, indicates addition of fresh longs for the fourth consecutive session and the markets are slowly consolidating at these levels, before making the next up-move.

On the technical side, Nifty closed above yet another milestone of 5300, with increase in volumes, and as suggested yesterday, the markets consolidation is taking place, in the absence of any major domestic and international news and all the technical indicators are also supportive at these levels, indicating there may be further upside left in the market. Going forward the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5322, 5341 & 5366 on the upside and 5278, 5253 & 5234 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee snapped its four day rally and settled at 54.48, while the USD-INR future settled at 54.79 for the day.

On the international market front, the Asian markets have closed almost flat, while the European markets have closed in the red. The major international news to watch out for this week,  will be the ECB meet on Thursday and the U.S. monthly job reports on Friday. On the energy futures front, both the Brent and the WTI crude futures are trading down by 0.93 and 0.68% at 99.75 and 87.06 $/bbl respectively, but the Natural gas future is trading up by 1.22% at 2.93 $/MMBtu