LISTLESS

The markets opened on a very quite note after Friday’s correction but continued to trade with a mildly positive bias throughout the entire trading session and ultimately both the indices closed almost flat till the end of the session. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 8 & 13 points respectively. The market breadth was evenly balanced with 736 advances to 769 declines. On the sectoral front, there was hardly any activity, but still the IT sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Media, FMCG & Auto sectors. On the individual stocks front, Tata Motors, DLF, Wipro, Axis Bank & Sun Pharma were the top five Nifty gainers, while Jindal Steel, ONGC, Maruti, Ultratech Cement & Grasim were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 460 crores, while the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 238 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in Index Futures and Options to the tune of 178 & 234 crores respectively, while they were net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of 319 crores and net sellers in Stock options to the tune of mere 98 crores. Nifty futures settled at 5866, with just 10 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Options side PCR stood at 0.98, along with a fall in the India VIX by 0.96%. On the Call as well the Put Options side, there was massive loss of open interest, indicating hectic rollover to the next series. Nifty January future settled at a hefty premium of 61 points premium to the spot, along with a massive addition of open interest, while on the Options side, January 6000 call has added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 & 5800 calls, while on the Put options side, the 5800 put has added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700, 5600 & 5900 puts. The entire activity in the cash market was again stock specific, while in the F&O space healthy rollovers have taken place till now.

On the technical side, although it was a listless session, Nifty managed to hold on to the crucial level of 5845 and as mentioned yesterday much of the movement will depend on the F&O expiry and international economic news. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be, 5870 & 5886 on the upside and 5843, 5812 & 5748 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee reversed its earlier losses to close stronger against the dollar today, aided by custodial flows and dollar sales by software exporters. The partially convertible Rupee, finally closed at 54.95, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.99 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a mixed note, while most of the European markets were closed today and the U.S. markets are also trading with losses amid concern that U.S. president and the Congress will fail to agree on a budget by the end of the year. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading with marginal losses at  108.72 & 88.52 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas future is trading down by 2.84% 3.38 $/MMBtu.