INDECISION

The markets opened with a strong negative bias and touched their intraday lows, within the first two and a half hours of the trading session, but from this point onwards the markets started recovering their losses and ended up almost flat, till the end of the session. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, down by 12 and 26 points respectively. The market breadth was extremely negative with 598 advances to 869 declines. On the sectoral front the FMCG sector was the biggest looser, followed by the Metal sector, on the other hand the Energy sector was the biggest gainer followed by the Pharma and the IT sectors. On the individual stocks front, Asian Paint, Wipro, NTPC, PNB & Dr. Reddy were the top five Nifty gainers for the day. On the institutional side, the FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 209 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 435 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the FIIs were net sellers in both Index and Stock futures to the tune of 348 and 147 crores respectively. Nifty future closed at 5241, with 25 points premium to the spot, along with a moderate loss of open interest. On the option side, the PCR increased to 1.09, along with a fall in the India VIX by 3.88%. On the Call option side the 5500 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5400 & 5300 calls. On the Put option side, the 4800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 4700 put, on the other hand the 5000 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5300 & 5100 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space doesn’t indicate any major activity as the markets are unable to find any fresh triggers for movement on either side, but the lack of policy action from the government is making the DIIs nervous, as a result of which they are cashing out on every opportunity in the markets.

On the technical side, Nifty has managed to close above the 5200 mark for the fourth consecutive session on heavy volumes, but Nifty has been stuck in the range of 200 points, for the last twelve sessions and with most of the corporate and economic news already priced in, it remains to be seen, whether Nifty will be able to break out of this particular trading range. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5235, 5255 and 5291 on the upside and 5179, 5151 and 5143 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee posted its third straight weekly decline as concerns about the global economy continued after the Federal Reserve and the ECB refrained from any immediate action this week. The rupee closed 55.75 for the week, while the near month USD-INR future closed at 56.09 for the week.

On the international markets front, except the Asian markets, the European and the U.S. markets have closed on a strongly positive note. On the energy futures front , both the Brent ad WTI crude oil futures have closed on a firm note at 108.94 & 91.40 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas future closed down by 1.47% at 2.87 $/MMBtu for the week