ANTICIPATION

The benchmark indices opened on an absolutely flat note, but after the initial one hour of trade the market breadth collapsed suddenly and from that point onwards there was no looking back and the market breadth worsened with every passing hour and ultimately the markets closed at their lowest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed down by 36 and 142 points respectively. The market breadth was also ended on an extremely negative note with 506 advances to 1003 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest loser followed by the Energy, Auto and Midcap sectors. On the individual stocks front, Siemens, Asian Paint, Lupin, M&M, and Ranbaxy were the top five Nifty gainers while DLF, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors, JP Associate and Gail were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 1018 crores while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 584 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in both Index futures and Options to the tune of 298 and 1427 crores respectively, while they were net sellers in both Stock futures and Options to the tune of 535 and 42 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5897, with 25 points premium to the spot, along with a marginal decrease in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.09, along with an increase in the India VIX by 3.41%. On the Call options side, the 6000 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 & 6200 calls, while on the Put Options side, the 5800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 6000, 5900, 5600 & 5500 puts, while the 5400 put added the maximum open interest. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates liquidation of positions just ahead of the major event – the RBI quarterly monetary policy, along with some opportunistic call writing took place at higher levels of the markets.

On the technical side, Nifty has managed to consolidate in the 70 points ranges for the last one week, after the recent end February correction and seems to be forming a higher base at these levels. The guiding factors in the next week will be the RBI monetary policy review, & Advance tax numbers. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5924, 5972 on the upside and 5840, 5822 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee rose to a two-week high on Friday, notching up a second consecutive week of gains helped by inflows tied to a domestic share sale and by a weaker dollar after strong U.S. data raised chances of an early retreat from monetary easing. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.02, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.19 for the week.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a strong note, while the European and the U.S. markets have closed on a relatively weaker note. On the energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures have closed up by 0.79 & 0.45% at 109.82 & 93.45 $/bbl respectively and the Natural Gas future has closed up by 1.57% at 3.87 $/MMBtu.