SILVER LINING

The markets opened on a strong note, and touched their intraday highs within the first fifteen minutes of the trade, but gradually lost their momentum over the next one hour and continued to trade range bound till the second half of the trading session and with just half an hour left for the end of the day's session, the markets entered the negative zone and touched their intraday lows, but recovered most of their losses till the end of the session and closed almost flat, for the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 9 and 27 points respectively. The market breadth was positive with 913 advances to 582 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest looser, followed by the IT sector, while the Banking and the Midcap sector ended with modest gains.On the individual stocks front, DLF, Bharti Airtel, Hindalco, PNB and HDFC managed to outperform the markets today. On the institutional side, once again the FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 590 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 544 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs brought Index futures worth 416 crores and sold Stock futures worth 152 crores. Nifty future closed at 5306, with 18 points premium to the spot, along with a moderate increase in open interest. On the Options side, the PCR marginally fell to 1.04, along with a moderate fall in the India VIX by 2.37%. On the Call options side, the 5400 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 and 5300 calls. On the Put options side, the 4900 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5300 and 5200 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates fresh longs being formed on the futures and options front, which has been validated by the strong buy figures by the FIIs in the last three sessions, while the open interest buildup on the call and put options side indicates the lower range for the markets between 4900 - 5000 and the upper range at 5400.

On the technical side, Nifty has managed to close above the 5200 mark comfortably, for the third consecutive session along with increase in volumes, which is a bullish indicator and the markets have a fair chance, to touch new highs  from these levels. Going forward the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5314, 5341 & 5366 on the upside and 5262, 5227 & 5210 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee rose for the fourth straight session, as foreign banks sold dollars, likely on behalf of their offshore clients looking to invest in the domestic share market and the rupee finally closed at 54.36, while the USD-INR future settled at 54.78 for the day.

On the International market front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a firm note, while the U.S. markets have closed early today, on a firm note, ahead of the independence day holiday tomorrow. The U.S. markets have closed in the positive on the back of better than estimated factory orders data. On the energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude futures are trading up by 3.45 & 4.66% at 100.64 and 87.65 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future is trading up 1.67% at 2.87 $/MMBtu.