ANXIOUS

The markets opened on a very flat note, and traded almost flat for the entire first half of the trading session, but just at the start of the second half of the trading session the markets entered the negative zone and with just half an hour left for the end of the day’s session, the markets fell almost vertically and ultimately both the indices closed near their lowest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed down by 35 and 94 points respectively. The market breadth was extremely negative with 525 advances to 970 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest loser followed by the IT sector, while the rest of the sectoral indices closed marginally in the negative. On the individual stocks front, Tata Motors, Axis Bank, State bank of India, Dr. Reddy & ONGC were the top five Nifty gainers while BHEL, GAIL, Asian Paint, Jindal Steel & Power Grid were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side there was hardly any activity, with FIIs turning net sellers to the tune of mere 132.68 crores and DIIs turning net buyers to the tune of 132.77 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, the FIIs were net sellers in Index futures and Options to the tune of 427 & 59 crores respectively, while they were net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 887 crores and net buyers in Stock options to the tune of 135 crores. Nifty future settled at 5930, with a premium of 60 points to the spot. On the Options side PCR stood at 0.83, along with a fall in the India VIX by 2.55%. On the Call options side, the 6000 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 & 5500 calls. On the Put option side, the 5500 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600, 5800, 5900 & 6000 puts. The entire activity in the cash markets was stock specific, while in the F&O space the huge premium on Nifty future indicates that a lot of bullish positions have been carried forward to the new series and accordingly the build up is also visible on the options side.

On the technical side, although Nifty corrected in the later half today due to squaring - off of some left over positions, but the fall was not significant at all since there were no major cuts or short positions on the stock as well as sectoral front. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5912 & 5944 on the upside and 5853 and 5822 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell after two sessions of gains tracking lower stocks and as oil refiners brought dollars. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.93, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.25 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a fairly positive note but the U.S. markets are trading with losses amidst an impasse on federal budget talks and as consumer confidence declined more than forecast. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading down by close to a percent at 110.12 & 90.15 $/bbl respectively and the Natural Gas future is trading 0.51% at 3.40 $/MMBtu.