LISTLESS

The markets opened on a very quite note after yesterday’s gap up close and continued to trade range-bound till the start of the second half of the trading session, and with one and half hour left for the end of the day’s session, the markets started falling and touched their intraday lows, but somehow managed to cover the minor losses till the end of the session and ultimately ended up almost flat. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 6.5 & & 7 points respectively. The market breadth was extremely negative with 672 advances to 834 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG was the biggest gainer for the day, while the rest of the sectors, ended up marginally in the positive or slightly negative. On the individual stocks front, Kotak Bank, ACC, ITC, Asian Paint & Dr. Reddy were the top five Nifty gainers, while Hindalco, Jindal Steel, Bajaj Auto, JP Associate & Cairn were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 374 crores while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 344 crores in the cash market.

On the Derivatives side, there was little participation in the Index and Stock futures, where FIIs were net buyers in Index futures to the tune of 120 crores and net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 11 crores respectively, while the FIIs were net buyers in Index options to the tune of 308 crores and net sellers in the stock options to the tune of 63 crores. Nifty future settled at 5740, with 36 points premium to the spot, along with a marginal increase in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 0.98, along with a massive rise in the India VIX by 7.10%. On the Call options side, except the 6000 call which added the maximum open interest, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 5900 calls, while on the Put options side the 5700 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500, 5800 & 5600 puts. The entire activity in the cash market indicates sector and stock specific buying, while on the F&O side, it was mere profit booking and positioning of portfolios, just before the major event of U.S. elections tomorrow.

On the technical side, Nifty managed to scrape through and close above the 5700 mark and was able to maintain yesterday’s gap up close with marginal increase in volumes. Although it was a listless session, the market breadth indicated the negative bias. Keeping this in mind, the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5715, 5727 & 5745 on the upside and 5685, 5663 and 5639 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell to its lowest level against the dollar in the last one and a half months, tracking a bout of global risk aversion ahead of U.S. elections and a key Greek parliamentary vote on austerity. The partially convertible rupee finally closed at 54.60, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.93 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a mixed note, while the European markets have closed in the red, and the U.S. stocks are little changed after last week’s advance as American’s prepare to vote in the Presidential election and amid growing concern that Greece will struggle to win a bailout. On the energy futures front, the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading up by 0.71 & 0.29% at 106.44 & 85.11 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas future id trading almost flat at 3.55 $/MMBtu.