ASCENT

The benchmark indices opened on a flattish note, but touched their intraday highs within the first two hours of the trading session, but from that point onwards, the markets gradually lost all their gains and touched their intraday low within the next one and half hours, and continued to trade range-bound till the end of the session and ultimately closed almost flat. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, up by 4 and 21 points respectively. The market breadth turned negative till the end of the session with 597 advances to 895 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the IT, Banking and Energy sectors, while the Pharma sector was the biggest loser for the day. On the individual stocks front, BPCL, Hero Motocorp, BHEL, RelInfra & Bajaj Auto were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, on the other hand Bharti Airtel, Cipla, Ranbaxy, Siemens & Sesa Goa were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 361 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 156 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, there was hardly any activity, where FIIs were net buyers in Index futures to the tune of mere 98 crores and net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 161 crores. Nifty future settled at 5451, along with a marginal increase in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.16, along with a increase in the India VIX by 4.19%. On the Call options side, 5600 call added the maximum open interest followed by the 5500 & 5400 calls and there was uniform loss of open interest from the 4600 to 5300 calls. On the Put option side, the 5400 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5300 & 5500 puts, on the other hand the 5100 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5200 & 4900 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as the F&O markets indicates marginal addition of long positions in the cash as well as the Index futures side, along with put writing at higher levels to take advantage of the  current up-move.

On the technical side, although it was a listless session, Nifty closed comfortably above the 5400 mark for the second consecutive session with marginal increase in volumes and with positive news flow from Europe  & U.S since yesterday, most of the global indices are geared up for a short term rally. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5459, 5465 & 5472 on the upper side and 5422, 5409 and 5397 on the downside. On the currency front, the Ruppe fell from its three week high, ahead of the Federal reserve meet and on account of oil firms and government, stepping up their dollar purchases. The Rupee finally settled at 55.42, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.43 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European markets have closed, almost flat, but the U.S, markets are rallying after the Federal Reserve announced that it will buy mortgage-backed securities, to boost economic growth and reduce unemployment. On the energy futures front, the Brent crude oil future is trading up by 0.48% at 115.89 $/bbl and the WTI crude oil future is trading up by 1.24% at 98.21 $/bbl, while the Natural gas future is trading down by 0.77% at 3.03 $/MMBtu.