ASCENT

The benchmark indices opened on a mildly positive note, but started losing their gains and ultimately touched their intraday lows at the start of the second half of the trading but to everyone’s surprise the markets made a almost V shaped recovery from this point onwards and with just one hour left for the end of the day’s session both the indices made their intraday highs, but could not sustain their momentum and lost most of their gains and closed almost flat, till the end of the session. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 13 & 57 points respectively. The market breadth however closed marginally positive with 786 advances to 704 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the IT & Banking sectors. On the individual stocks front, Grasim, State bank of India, Axis Bank, LT & HCL Tech were the top five Nifty gainers  while Tata Motors, Ultratech Cement, Siemens, ICICI Bank & Ranbaxy were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, once again there was very little participation, where FIIs were net buyers to the tune of mere 115 crores, while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 164 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the story was the same, where FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of mere 36 crores and net buyers in Index options to the tune of 78 crores on the other hand they were net sellers in Stock futures and options, to the tune of 61 & 18 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5640 with 12 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.0, along with a fall in the India VIX by 3.56%. On the Call option side, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6000 calls. On the Put options side, the 5600 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700 & 5500 puts, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6000 puts. The entire activity in the Cash market was restricted to sector specific buying, while in the F&O side, profit booking continued in the Index future and Call options along with Put writing at higher levels, adding credence to the short upmove.

On the technical side, although movement was very rangebound today, Nifty has held on convincingly above the 5600 level, for the second consecutive session. The F&O data along with the positive global indicators, make a perfect case for a upmove from this level. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5645, 5661 & 5679 on the upside and 5609, 5591 & 5574 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell  for a third straight session as persistent dollar buying by oil refiners and absence of major dollar inflows due to a holiday in the United States, hurt the local currency. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 55.21, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.25 for the day.

On the International markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a very strong note, while the European markets rallied for the fourth day and the Euro strengthened today as Greek bonds rose for the 10^th day as the region’s leaders prepared to hold budget talks. On the Energy futures front, the Brent crude oil future is trading down by 0.4% at 110.41 $/bbl, while the WTI crude oil future is trading up by 0.48% at 87.17 $/bbl, and the Natural Gas future is trading up by 2.41% at 3.91 $/MMBtu.