CONSOLIDATION

The markets opened on a flat note but touched their intraday highs within the first half an hour of the trade but could not sustain the momentum and gradually lost all their gains at one point of the session, but some how managed to regain a part of it and close marginally in the positive. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 25 and 75 points respectively. The market breadth worsened as the session progressed and ultimately closed in the negative with 592 advances to 922 declines. On the sectoral front, the Energy sector was the biggest gainer, while the IT sector was the biggest loser followed by the Pharma and Auto sectors. On the individual stocks front, BPCL, ONGC, NTPC, Maruti and Power grid were the top five Nifty gainers for the day, while Wipro, Hero Motocorp, Dr. Reddy, Jindal Steel and Hind Unilever were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 116 crores and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 968 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in Index futures to the tune of 216 crores and net sellers in Index Options to the tune of 108 crores, while they were net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of mere 13 crores and net sellers in Stock options to the tune of 94 crores. Nifty future settled at 6075 with just 11 points premium to the spot along with a negligible increase in open interest. On the Options side PCR stood at 1.07 along with a marginal decrease in open interest. On the Call options side, there was hardly any activity, but still the 6100 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 6200 call, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6000 call. On the Put options side, the 5700 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800 put, while the 6000 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 6100 & 6200 puts. The entire activity in the Cash markets was stock specific while in the F&O space as the markets touched new levels markets participants took selective positions on the higher side with addition of longs along with Put writing at higher levels to hedge their positions.

On the technical side, spot Nifty closed strongly above the 6000 mark for the third consecutive session but much of the upmove will depend on the corporate results and expectations building up ahead of the quarterly monetary policy review. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 6082, 6100 & 6117 on the upside and 6030 and 6008 on the downside. On the Currency front, the Rupee strengthened to its highest level in two and a half months on Friday as the government’s decision to partially deregulate diesel and a broad risk on sentiment globally boosted the currency. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 53.71, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 53.86 for the day.

On the International markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a very strong note, while the European markets have closed on a mixed note and the U.S. stocks rose as House Republicans plan to vote next week on a temporary increase in debt limit and investors watched corporate earnings. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures closed almost flat at 111.89 & 95.56 $/bbl respectively and Natural Gas future closed up by 2.06 % at 3.57 $/MMBtu.