JITTERY

The markets opened on a extremely flattish note, and somehow managed to stay in the positive zone till the 1^st hour of the second half of the trading session but ultimately fell and touched their intraday lows before recovering only a bit till the end of the day’s session, ultimately both the indices closed very near to their day’s low. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, down by 15 and 40 points respectively. The market breadth also turned extremely negative with 492 advances to 981 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest loser followed by the Energy sector, while the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer for the day. On the individual stocks front, Sterlite, M&M, Tata Power, Hind Unilver & Coal India were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, while Bharti Airtel, State bank of India, HDFC, BPCL & Ranbaxy were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, the FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 337 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of a massive 754 crores, in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the FIIs were net buyers in Nifty futures to the tune of a mere 27 crores and net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 331 crores. Nifty future settled at 5350, with 27 points premium to the spot, along with a moderate increase in open interest. On the Options side, the PCR increased to 1.07, along with a marginal fall in the India VIX by 0.24%. On the Call options side, the 5500 call lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200 & 5300 calls, on the other hand the 5400 call added the maximum open interest. On the Put options side, 4800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 4600 & 4700 puts, while the 5300 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5100 & 5400 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as the futures side, saw unwinding of longs, along with creation of selective longs.

On the technical side, Nifty managed to close above the 5300 mark, with slight increase in volumes and today’s softening of the markets, was mainly due to the slew of bad economic news which heightened the fears among the domestic investors and intensified the selling pressure which resulted in an increase, in the Nifty future premium. As it is evident from the F&O data, the market sentiment is fairly positive and keeping this in mind, the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5256, 5390 and 5403 on the upside, and 5300, 5278 and 5244 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee rose on the back of continued gains in Asian emerging currencies and other risk assets, but an unexpected slump in industrial output capped gains by reinforcing gains about economic growth. The Rupee finally settled at 55.27, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.42 for the day.

On the international market front, the Asian markets have close strongly in the positive zone, while the European markets have closed almost flat and the U.S. markets are also trading flat amid concerns about a worsening European debt crisis, which overshadowed the data showing unexpected fall in U.S. jobless claims. On the energy futures side both the Brent and WTI crude futures are trading in the positive at 113.17 & 93.77 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future, is trading up by 3.39% at 3.03 $/MMBtu , after the data showed an unexpected fall in U.S. Natural Gas inventories.