WAIT AND WATCH

The benchmark indices opened on mildly positive note, but after the initial half an hour of the trade, the market breadth started worsening and the markets gradually gave up all their gains and eventually entered the negative zone in the second half of the trading session and with just one hour left for the end of the day’s session, the markets touched made their intraday lows but ultimately both the indices covered up all their losses till the end of the session and closed almost flat. The market breadth was extremely negative with 430 advances to 1066 declines. On the sectoral front, there was hardly any activity, with almost all the sectors closing marginally in the negative. On the individual stocks front, M&M, HDFC, PowerGrid, IDFC & Tata Power were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, while JP Associate, DLF, Rel Infra, Ambuja Cement & PNB were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, there was very little participation with FIIs turning net buyers to the tune of mere 143 crores while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of just 12 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in both Index futures and Options to the tune of 276 & 271 crores respectively, and they were also net buyers in Stock futures and Options to the tune of 271 & 23 crores respectively. On the options side PCR stood at 0.93, along with a fall in the India VIX by 5.22%. Nifty future settled at 5584 with just 13 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Call options side, the 5800 call lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700, 5500 & 5900 calls. On the Put options side, the 5800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700 & 5600 puts, on the other hand the 5400 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500 and 5300 puts. The entire activity in the cash markets indicates stock specific buying, while in the F&O space profit booking continued in Nifty futures, as well as some short positions were squared on the higher side of the market in the Call options side along with put writing on at lower levels indicate change in market sentiment.

On the technical side, Nifty could not close above the 5600 mark for the third consecutive session, but managed to hold on to the crucial support of 5569 and all it needs is a few more sessions at these levels in order to consolidate and reverse the trend. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5607, 5643 and 5650 on the upside and 5541, 5524 & 5507 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee ended slightly weaker today, hurt by the weakness in the domestic shares and demand for dollars from the oil companies. The partially convertible Rupee, finally closed at 55.09, while the  near month USD-INR future settled at 55.13 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a mixed note while the European markets have ended on a positive note and the U.S. markets are trading almost flat. On the energy futures front, both  the Brent and WTI crude are trading down by 2.09 & 3.09 % at 109.26 and 86.52 $/bbl respectively while the Natural Gas future is trading up by 2.25 % at 3.80 $/MMBtu.