ANXIOUS

The markets opened on a very flat note, but continued to trade with a positive bias for greater part of the trading session, and with just one hour left for the end of the trading session, the markets touched their intraday highs, but from that point onwards as the news of downward revision of GDP estimates, from the international brokerages hit the markets, the markets fell almost vertically and briefly entered the negative zone, before closing almost flat for the day. The market breadth also turned negative till the end, with 602 advances to 892 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest looser followed by the Infra & Midcap sectors, on the other hand the Auto sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the IT & Metal sectors. On the individual stocks front, M&M, BPCL, Hindalco, Hindunilvr and Grasim were the top five Nifty gainers for the day while Bharti Airtel, Gail, DLF, IDFC & ICICI bank were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the Institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 1114 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 795 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, for the third consecutive session, the FIIs were net buyers in both Index and Stock futures to the tune of 710 and 159 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5348, with 10 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options side, the PCR fell to 1.01, with a marginal increase in the India VIX by 0.99%. On the Call options side 5300 call lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500 and 5000 calls, while on the Put Option side, the 5300 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 5200 & 5500 puts, on the other hand the 4800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5100 & 4900 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as the F&O space indicates creation of fresh longs as well as profit booking at the slightest signs of nervousness.

On the technical side, Nifty could not sustain the intraday gains, but still managed to close above the 5300 mark, on decent volumes on the back of sustained buying, by the FIIs in the cash as well as the futures market. Nifty is still trading above most of its short and long term moving averages and there are no divergences visible now on the indicators side. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5366, 5394 & 5412 on the upside and 5320, 5274 & 5250 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee fell today, snapping its three session winning streak on the back of dollar demand from oil refiners and a late fall in the euro. The Rupee finally settled at 55.42, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.44 for the day.

On the international markets front the Asian and European markets have closed almost flat while the U.S. markets are also trading flat after recovering the day’s losses, which have been offset by better than forecast corporate results. On the energy futures side, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading with minor losses after the unexpected fall in the U.S. crude oil inventories. The Brent and WTI crude futures are trading at 111.86 & 93.15 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas future is trading down by 1.28% at 2.92 $/MMBtu.