SIDEWARDS

Once again the markets opened on a negative note, and the market breadth worsened as the session progressed and with just one and half hours left for the end of the session, the markets touched their intraday lows, but from this point onwards, the markets tried to recover some of their losses and ultimately both the indices closed near their day’s low. The Nifty and the Sensex closed, down by 41 & 133 points respectively. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest loser, followed by the Banking, Energy & Media sectors. On the individual stocks front, M&M, Hero Motocorp, Bajaj Auto, Ambuja Cement & GAIL were the top five Nifty gainers, while PNB, JP Associate, Power Grid, ITC & Hind Unilever were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, both FIIs and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 199 and 90 crores respectively in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the story was the same as FIIs were net sellers in both Index and Stock futures, to the tune of 353 and 50 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5699, with premium falling to 35 points to the spot, along with a marginal decrease in open interest. On the options side, PCR stood at 0.96, along with an increase in the India VIX by 5.10%. On the Call options side, the 6000 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800, 5900 & 5700 calls. On the Put options side, the 5200 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5400, 5300 & 5700 puts. The entire activity in the cash market indicates sector specific selling, while in the F&O markets, there was call writing at higher levels along with corresponding addition of long positions on the Put options side.

On the technical side, spot Nifty continued its hide and seek with the 5700 level and once again closed below the 5700 mark, making it the thirteenth consecutive session of sideways movement. This indicates complete indecision among the market participants and looking at the buy and sell figures in the cash as well as the F&O markets, this may continue for some more time, before any change of trend happens. The biggest event to watch out next week will be the RBI’s quarterly monetary policy review. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5693 and 5722 on the upside and 5629, 5612 & 5583 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee closed at 53.56, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 53.63 for the week.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets closed deep in the red, while the European markets closed on a positive note and the U.S. markets closed have closed almost flat. On the Energy futures front , both the Brent and WTI crude have closed up by 0.98% & 0.27% at 109.55 & 86.28 $/bbl, while the Natural Gas future has closed down by 0.99% at 3.40 $/MMBtu.