CAUTIOUS

The markets opened on a very flat note, and entered the negative zone within the first fifteen minutes of the trade, and continued this zig-zag movement of frequently entering the negative and positive territory for the entire trading session and ultimately both the indices closed almost flat for the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, up by 5 and 17 points respectively for the day. The market breadth managed to stay positive with 802 advances to 680 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest loser for the day, and the Pharma sector was the biggest gainer for the day, while most of the sectors ended up marginally in the positive or negative zone. On the individual stocks front, Bharti Airtel, Sun Pharma, Coal India, Tata Steel & Bajaj Auto were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, while  Axis Bank, Jindal Steel, BHEL, State Bank of India & Tata Power were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 693 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 318 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side the FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of 471 crores and net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of mere 23 crores. Nifty future settled at 5372, with just 9 points premium to the spot along with a massive loss of open interest. On the Option side, PCR stood at 1.15, along with a increase in the India VIX by 3.46%. On the Call options side, 5500 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 & 5300 calls, while the 5200 call lost the maximum open interest. On the Put Option side, the 5300 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500 & 5200 puts, on the other hand the 4900 put lost the maximum open interest followed by the 5100 & 4800 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as the F&O markets indicates profit booking in the cash as well as the Index futures ahead of some major news for the international markets.

On the technical side, once again Nifty managed to close comfortably above the 5300 mark, but the session was a very range-bound session, hence not much is to be read into today’s close as much of the momentum from this point onwards will be guided, by international and domestic news flow. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5375, 5388 & 5401 on the upside and 5349, 5336 & 5310 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee weakened today, on account of dollar demand from oil refiners, but further weakening was averted on hopes of monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve, following the weak non-farm payroll data on Friday. The rupee finally closed at 55.44, while the near month USD-INR future closed at 55.54 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a dull note, and the U.S. markets are also trading the same way after the Greek prime minister failed to secure agreement form coalition partners on spending cuts, which raised doubts over Greece’s debt crisis management and overshadowed speculation that central banks will take action to spur the economy. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures, are trading almost flat at 113.94 & 96.08 4/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas future is trading up by 1.90% at 2.73 $/MMBtu.