TREND CHANGE

The markets opened with a gap up, buoyed by the positive measures taken by the government and RBI’s view on the economy. The markets traded with a strong positive bias throughout the day and ultimately both the indices closed near their highest point of the day. The market breadth was extremely positive with 869 advances to 649 declines. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 33 and 111 points respectively. On the sectoral front, the Pharma sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Energy and IT sectors, while the FMCG sector was the biggest loser for the day. On the individual stocks front, Sun Pharma, ONGC, Tata Motors, Asian Paint & WIPRO were the top five Nifty gainers, while HDFC, LT, Axis Bank, ITC & ICICI Bank were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 1245 crores and the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 369 crores.

On the derivatives side, the FIIs were net sellers in Index futures, to the tune of 166 crores and net buyers in Index Options to the tune of 445 crores and they were net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of mere 48 crores and net sellers in Stock options to the tune of 39 crores. Nifty future settled at 5947, with just 17 points premium to the spot, along with a marginal decrease in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 0.98, along with a marginal increase in India VIX by 0.21%. On the Call options side, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6000 calls, while on the Put options side, the 5700 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 6000 put. The entire activity in the Cash markets was broad based today, while in the F&O there was mainly profit booking in the Index futures as well as options side.

On the technical side, once again Nifty managed to break the 5900 barrier, with marginal increase in volumes and the strong FII inflows coupled with good news on the domestic front, will help sustain an upmove, although occasional hiccups like headwinds from the international markets may halt the upmove, the markets are much more resilient now than they were a few months back. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be, 5942, 5955 & 5971 on the upside and 5913, 5895 & 5884 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee snapped its five day losing streak as dollar sales by power sector financing firm helped offset the demand from oil and gold importers. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.55, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.72 for the day.

On the International markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a strongly positive note, while the European markets have also closed on a positive note , but the U.S. markets are trading with loses on the back of decrease in housing stats. On the energy futures front, both Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading up by 1.30 & 1.91 % at 110.25 & 90.09 $/bbl respectively on the back of fall in the weekly U.S. crude oil inventories, while the Natural Gas future is trading down by 2.18% at 3.34 $/MMBtu on the back of unexpected rise in U.S. weekly inventories.