LISTLESS

The markets opened on a negative note, and continued to trade in the same zone for the next two and half hours of the trading session, but slowly recovered and continued to trade sideways till the start of the second half of the trading session and with just half an hour left for the end of the day’s session, the markets touched their intraday highs and ultimately both the indices closed almost flat near the day’s high. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 25 and 76 points respectively. The market breadth was extremely positive, with 1102 advances to 416 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Banking & Midcap sectors. On the individual stocks front, IDFC, Cipla, ICICI bank and Maruti were the few stocks which managed to outperform the market. On the institutional front, the FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 429 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 203 crores respectively in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs brought Index futures worth 124 crores and sold Stock futures worth 355 crores. Nifty future closed at 5344, with 17 points premium to the spot along with a moderate increase in open interest. On the options side the PCR increased to 1.12, along with a marginal increase in the India VIX by 0.44%. On the Call options side, the 5500 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 & 5400 calls, while the 5300 call lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 4700 & 5200 calls. On the Put options side, the 5300 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200, 4900 & 4800 puts, while the 4800 put lost the maximum open interest. The activity in the F&O space, indicates addition of fresh longs, along with the put writing at higher levels for the fifth consecutive session.

On the technical side, once again Nifty closed comfortably above the 5300 level, along with increase in volumes. On the daily charts, Nifty is about to enter the overbrought zone, but on the weekly charts there is a lot of scope for Nifty to increase, which has been validated by the buy figures of the FIIs, both in the cash and futures market. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5344, 5362 & 5389 on the upside and 5299, 5271 & 5254 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell for a second straight session, after traders expected a interest rate cut from the ECB, but the surprise interest rate cut announced by China, helped the rupee recover some of its losses and it finally settled at 54.94, while the USD-INR future settled at 55.17 for the day.

On the international market front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a mixed note, while the U.S. markets are trading on a dull note on the back of disappointment over the European Central Bank’s efforts to tame the debt crisis overshadowed improving American unemployment data. On the energy futures front, the Brent crude future is trading up by 1.30% at 101.09 $/bbl while the WTI crude future is trading down by 0.5% at 87.26 $/bbl after data showed a more than expected fall in the U.S. crude oil inventories and the Natural Gas future is trading up by 0.41% at 2.91 $/MMBtu.