INDECISIVE

The benchmark indices opened on a very flat note, and touched their intraday lows within the first hour of trade, but from that point onwards the markets started recovering slowly and with just half an hour left for the end of the day’s session the markets entered the positive territory and rose almost vertically from that point and closed near the highest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 41 and 131 points respectively. The market breadth also improved considerably and ultimately closed on a positive note, with 909 advances to 568 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Midcap, IT, FMCG and Metals sector. On the individual stocks front, GAIL, Siemens, Hindalco, Ambuja Cement & IDFC were the top five Nifty gainers, while Tata Motors, HeroMotocorp, Cairn, Bharti Airtel & Jindal Steel were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 573 crores while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 346 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of 140 crores and net buyers in Index options to the tune of 214 crores and they were net buyers in both Stock futures and options to the tune of 393 and 257 crores respectively. Nifty April future settled at 5714, with 32 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 0.85,along with a fall in the India VIX by 3.67%. On the Call options side, the 5700 April call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800, 5500 & 5900 calls, while on the Put Options side, the 5600 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5500, 5700 & 5400 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space was mainly rollover based, but fewer positions were rolled over to the next series, indicating lack of conviction among the market participants.

On the technical side, Nifty has hovered around its 250 DEMA support for the last three sessions and the short pullback on Thursday was mainly a result of short covering on the F&O side, but the overall trend still remains downward but after retracing almost 50% from its January high, a short term pullback may happen, before it starts falling once again. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5715, 5748 on the upside and 5626, 5570 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee pared its early losses, to close stronger against the dollar, in the trading session of the fiscal year, tracking a recovery in domestic shares and dollar sales by exporters. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.28, while the near month USD-INR future closed at 54.65 for the day.

On the International markets front the Asian markets have closed on a mixed note, while the European and the U.S. markets have closed on a mildly positive note. On the energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI club future, closed up by 0.30 & 0.67% at 110.02 & 97.23 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas future closed down by 1.08% at 4.02 $/MMBtu.