DESCENT

The markets opened with a gap down and traded with an extremely negative bias throughout the entire trading session, but with just one and a half hour left for the end of the day’s session the markets started falling with greater intensity and ultimately both the indices closed at their lowest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed down by 63 and 202 points respectively. The market breadth was also extremely negative with 395 advances to 1108 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest loser followed by the IT, Midcap & Auto sectors, while the FMCG sector was the sole and biggest gainer for the day. On the individual stocks front, Sun Pharma, ITC, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paint & HCL Tech were the top five Nifty gainers while Hindalco, ICICI Bank, Jindal Steel, Bajaj Auto & Maruti were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 304 crores and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 434 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of 223 crores and net buyers in Index options to the tune of just 7 crores, while they were net buyers in both Stock futures and options to the tune of mere 42 and 2 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5867 with just 16 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Options side PCR stood at 1.37, along with a massive jump in the India VIX by 7.07%. On the Call options side, the 5900 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800 & 6000 calls. On the Put options side the 5600 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700 & 5500 puts, while the 5800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 & 6000 puts. The entire activity in the cash market indicates across the sector selling, while in the F&O space massive call writing happened at higher levels, accompanied by long positions on the Put options side.

On the technical side, once again the markets resumed their downward journey, and Nifty closed at its crucial support of 5851, but the intensity of fall took everyone by surprise and the F&O data suggests that it is just the start of the downslide and the levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5882 and 5913 on the upside and 5831 and 5815 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee fell today as caution ahead of inflation data hit domestic shares while state run banks were spotted buying dollars. The partially convertible Rupee closed at 54.30, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.49 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed deep in the red while the European markets have also closed on a mixed note and the U.S. stocks are little changed after a report showed retail sales increased in February. On the Energy futures front, the Brent crude oil future is trading down by 1.01% at 108.11 $/bbl, while the WTI crude oil future is trading almost flat at 92.59 $/bbl and the Natural gas future is trading up by 1.11% at 3.68 $/MMBtu.