STRUGGLE

Once again the markets opened on positive note and continued to trade rangebound for the entire first half of the trading session and with just one hour into the second half of the session the markets started falling and touched their intraday lows but with just 45 minutes left for the end of the day's session the markets made an almost V shaped recovery and managed to close near their highest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 6 and 45 points respectively, but the market breadth continued to close in the negative with 420 advances to 1100 declines. On the sectoral front there was hardly any activity, but still the Banking sector was the biggest gainer and the Midcap sector was the biggest loser for the day. On the individual stocks front, Bharti Airtel, Tata Power, ITC, HeroMotocorp & ICICI Bank were the top five Nifty gainers while Hind Unilever, HCL Tech, JP Associate, IDFC & BPCL were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 803 crores and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 852 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of 297 crores and net buyers in Index Options to the tune of 1226 crores while they were net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 311 crores and net buyers in stock options to the tune of mere 2 crores. Nifty future settled at 6069 with just 15 points premium to the spot along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the options side PCR stood at 1.13 along with a fall in the India VIX by 1.58%. On the Call options side, except the 6200 call there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6100 call. On the Put Options side, the 5900 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 5400 and 5000 puts while the 6000 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 6100 and 5700 puts. The entire activity in the cash markets was stock specific while the undertone was very negative and on the F&O side more positions were liquidated in the Index futures and options indicating lack of participation due to absence of any fresh triggers ahead of the monetary policy review next week.

On the technical side, as expected Nifty continued to trade rangebound for another day and closed on a lackluster note. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 6073 and 6097 on the upside and 6026 & 5996 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee swayed in two way gains today, before settling higher, helped by gains in Euro and foreign fund related selling, while the currency gained comfort from the central bank’s move to ease exporters access to forex market. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 53.66 while the near month USD-INR future settled at 53.62 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a missed note, while the European markets have closed on a flat note and the U.S. stocks are fluctuating between gains and losses as lawmakers prepared to vote on the federal borrowing limit and investors weigh corporate earnings reports. On the energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil future are trading almost flat at 112.67 & 96.40 $/bbl respectively and the Natural gas future is also trading almost flat at 3.54 $/MMBtu.