LACKLUSTRE

The markets opened on a flat note, and touched their intraday highs within the first five minutes of the trade, but the excitement was short-lived and the markets gave away all their gains and traded in the negative zone for the next two hours, but again the markets recovered their losses and traded near the day’s high for the next two hours, but after the initial one and a half hours of trading in the second half, both the indices finally broke and ultimately closed near their day’s low. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, down by 21 and 79 points respectively. The market breadth was marginally positive with 904 advances to 593 declines. On the sectoral front, FMCG sector was the biggest loser, followed by the Energy and IT sectors, while the rest of sectors closed with marginal gains or losses. On the individual stocks front, BHEL, Jindal Steel, M&M, Maruti & Rel Infra were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, while HDFC, ONGC, Hind Unilever, ITC & HCL Tech were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 1600 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 1156 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in both Index and Stock futures, to the tune of 130 & 388 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5681, with just 11 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Options side, PCR fell to 0.98, along with a marginal fall in the India VIX by 0.53. on the Call options side, with a exception of the 5800 call which added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 and 5700 calls, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 4900 to 5600 calls. On the Put options side, the 5500 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800 & 5600 puts, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 4900 to 5500 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as the F&O space indicates, there was lack of participation from the market participants along with call and put writing at  higher levels, in order to define some trading range, just before the expiry as the action shifts to the new series.

On the technical side, once again Nifty managed to close above the 5600 mark, with slight fall in volumes, but still traded strongly for the entire session and with the expiry just ahead, it should trade range-bound, for the next three sessions before the next move happens in the new series. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be, 5699, 5728 & 5747 on the upside and 5651, 5620 & 5603 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell from its 4 month high and ended up almost flat, because of sustained dollar demand from oil importers. The Rupee finally settled at 53.47, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 53.48 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European markets have ended in the red and the U.S. markets are also trading with losses as European leaders clashed on ways to stem the debt crisis and reports from China and Germany signaled that the slowdown is deepening. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading down by close to two percent at 109.36 & 91.31 $/bbl respectively and the Natural Gas future is also trading down by close to a percent at 3.04 $/MMBtu.