TREND CHANGE ??

The markets opened with a gap up, tracking their Asian peers and maintained their momentum throughout the trading session and touched their intraday highs in the second half of the trading session. Ultimately both the indices closed near day’s high. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 53 & 194 points respectively. The market breadth was also positive with 886 advances to 623 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest gainer for the day, followed by the FMCG, IT & Auto sectors. On the individual stocks front, GAIL, Bajaj Auto, LT, Lupin & Sesa Goa were the top five Nifty gainers, while Bharti Airtel, Hind Unilever, Jindal Steel, Sun Pharma & BPCL were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the Institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 382 crores, while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 298 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in both Index and Stock futures, to the tune of 702 & 253 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5739 with 41 points premium to the spot. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.0 along with a fall in the India VIX by 2.98%. On the Call options side, the 6000 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 call, while the 5700 call lost the maximum open interest followed by the 5600 call. On the Put options side, the 5700 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 & 5400 puts. The entire activity in the cash as well as the futures markets indicates across the sector  buying along with short covering on the call options side and put writing at higher levels.

On the technical side, spot Nifty managed to breach the 5700 on an intraday basis, but ultimately closed below the 5700 mark. Although it was a smart rally, but all of it happened on low volumes, so it will make it tough for Nifty to sustain this level, but again the options data and hefty premium of Nifty futures, suggests the other way around. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5711, 5725 & 5744 on the upside and 5682, 5659 & 5634 on the downside. On the currency front, Rupee snapped its three day winning streak, as sharp losses in the euro prompted banks to cover their short dollar positions heading into the weekend. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 53.80, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.08 for the week.

On the International markets front, the Asian and the European markets closed on a fairly positive note, while the U.S. markets closed deep in the red as better than forecast payrolls report failed to keep technology and commodity shares from slumping. On the energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures closed down by 2.30 & 2.56% at 105.68 & 84.86 $/bbl respectively and the Natural gas future also closed down by 3.92% at 3.55 $/MMBtu.