INDECISIVE

The markets opened on a fairly positive note, and touched their intraday highs within the first two and a half hours of the trading session, but with  just one hour left for the start of the second half of the trading session, the markets started falling sharply and touched their intraday lows at the start of the second half of the trading session, but to everyone's surprise, once again the markets made a smart recovery and recovered most of their losses till the end of the session. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, up by 29 & 84 points respectively. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Banking, Pharma & IT sectors. On the individual stocks front, Ultratech Cement, LT, Sun Pharma, Infosys & Ranbaxy were the top five Nifty gainers, while GAIL, Bharti Airtel, BHEl, Hindalco & Siemens were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 614 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 431 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, there was hardly any participation, with FIIs turning net sellers in both Index and Stock futures to the tune of a mere 7 & 87 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5724, with the premium narrowing down to just 19 points, along with a marginal fall in open interest. On the Options side, PCR increased to 1.09, along with a fall in the India VIX by 2.15%. On the Call options side, the 5900 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800 call, while there was uniform loss of open interest from 5000 to 6000 calls. On the Put Options side, the 5600 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700 and 5500 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as F&O markets, indicates little participation from the market participants for the second consecutive day, along with marginal addition of long positions on the options side.

On the technical side, once again Nifty managed to close above the 5700 mark, with sharp increase in volumes, indicating strong support, coming around yesterday’s closing level. Although not much has changed on the daily technical indicators side, it might take a few more session for the markets to find a direction, but with global headwinds, the markets may see a few more dull sessions. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5729 & 5754 on the upside and 5678, 5652 & 5625 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee touched its lowest level of the week, today after falling for three consecutive sessions as dollar demand from large oil importers, and broad dollar short covering, offset inflows tied to the gains in domestic shares. The Rupee finally settled at 52.72 for the day, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 52.79.

On the international markets front the Asian and the European markets have closed deep in the red, and the U.S. markets are also trading with losses, as investors await the start of the earnings season and IMF cut growth forecast for the global economy. On the Energy futures front, both Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading up by 2.45 & 3.72% at 114.56 & 92.63 $/bbl respectively. The Natural Gas future is also trading up by 2.22 % at 3.47 $/MMBtu.