CAUTION

The markets opened on a positive note, building upon yesterday’s gains and traded rangebound with a positive bias for greater part of the day and with just one and a half hour left for the end of the day’s session the markets made an almost vertical rise and touched their intraday highs, before closing very near to their day’s high. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 32 & 80 points respectively. The market breadth was evenly poised with 749 advances to 752 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer followed by the Banking, Energy and Infra sectors. On the individual stocks front, Bharti Airtel, Ambuja Cement, BPCL, Ultratech Cement & Axis Bank were the top five Nifty gainers, while Sesa Goa, HCL Tech, Asian Paint, Coal India & Power Grid were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the Institutional side FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 1077 crores and the DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 756 crores in the cash markets.

On the derivatives side, there was hardly any activity, where the FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of 103 crores and net buyers in Index Options to the tune of mere 8 crores, while they were net buyers in Stock futures and Options to the tune of 67 & 17 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 6081 with just 24 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of premium. On the Options side PCR stood at 0.95 along with a fall in the India VIX by 0.88%. On the Call options side, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6200 calls, but the 6100 call shed the maximum open interest followed by the 5900, 6200 & 6000 calls. On the Put options side, the 6000 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 6200 put, while the 5700 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 put. The entire activity in the Cash market was stock specific and the FIIs continued with their buying spree. On the F&O side profit booking took place in the Index futures and options space as market participants decided to shed some of their long positions ahead of the uncertainties surrounding the international markets.

On the technical side, Nifty closed strongly above the 6000 mark for the second consecutive session with marginal increase in volumes , but the profit booking in the F&O space coupled with reducing premium on the Nifty future doesn't augur well for the markets and we may see a subdued session tomorrow. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 6076 & 6097 on the upside and 6026 & 5986 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee weakened today, hurt by dollar demand from oil firms and companies, but demand from the custodian banks prevented a sharper slide. The partially convertible Rupee, finally closed at 54.61, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.71 for the day.

On the international markets front, except Nikkei all the Asian markets closed with minor losses, while the European markets have closed in the red and the U.S stocks have also fallen on worries over debate regarding raising the U.S. borrowing limit. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading down by 0.68 & 0.44% at 110.20 & 94.17 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future is trading up by 1.68% at 3.42 $/MMBtu.