DILEMMA

The markets opened on very negative note, and the market breadth worsened as the session progressed because the markets witnessed across the sector selling and ultimately both the indices closed near their days’ low till the end of the session. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, down by 26 & 83 points respectively. The market breadth was extremely negative with 603 advances to 884 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest loser followed by the IT, Energy, Auto & Banking sectors. On the individual stocks front, LT, BPCL, Siemens, IDFC & ICICI Bank were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, while Jindal Steel, Kotak Bank, Hero Motocorp, Hindalco & ITC were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 252 crores, while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 299 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in Index futures to the tune of mere 88 crores, and net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 368 crores. Nifty future settled at 5695, along with a considerable loss of open interest, while the Nifty November future settled at 42 points premium to the spot. On the Options side, PCR fell to 0.98, along with a sharp rise in the India VIX by 5.14%. On the Nifty November series Call options side, the 6000 call has added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800, 5900 & 5700 calls, while on the Nifty November series put options side, the 5600 put added the has added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500,5700 & 5300 puts. The activity in the cash as well as futures side is quite perplexing, because FIIs were net buyers in cash markets and net sellers in Stock futures. On the F&O side rollovers took place at a hectic pace, due to holiday shortened trading week, just before the expiry.

On the technical side, once again spot Nifty fell short of closing above the 5700 mark, on falling volumes and to make things difficult the corporate results declared today and the global headwinds also aided the fall. The movement of Nifty over the next session will be guided mainly by the F&O rollovers, but still the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5714 & 5731 on the upside and 5662, 5639 & 5621 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee weakened today as dollar demand from oil firms and gold importers looking to meet month-end commitments weighed along with losses in domestic share markets. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 53.74, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 53.78 for the day.

On the international markets front, the global stock markets are posting their worst three-day selloff since July and commodities erased their year’s gains as companies like Du Pont, 3M and Alfa Laval AB  reports earnings that spurred concern the economy is weakening. On the Energy futures front, the Brent crude future is trading down by 1.51% at 107.78 $/bbl, and the WTI crude future is trading down by 2.76% at 86.19 $/bbl, while the Natural Gas future is trading up by 2.33% at 3.53 $/MMBtu.