LISTLESS

The markets opened on an absolutely flat note and immediately touched their intraday lows , within the first two minutes of trade, but from this point onwards the markets started recovering and started gaining strength but traded rangebound for the entire trading session and ultimately both the indices managed to close almost flat. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 27 and 57 points respectively. The market breadth however closed on a negative note with 687 advances to 819 declines. On the sectoral front, the Midcap sector was the biggest gainer followed by the Auto & Banking sectors. On the individual stocks front, Maruti, JP Associate, BPCL, Power grid & Reliance Infra were the top five Nifty gainers, while DLF, Bharti Airtel, IDFC, Siemens & Cairn were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 627 crores, while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of mere 46 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in Index futures to the tune of 263 crores and net buyers in Index Options to the tune of 493 crores, while they were net buyers in both Stock futures and Options to the tune of 570 and 244 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5729, with premium falling form 28 points to just 9 points to the spot along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options side PCR stood at 0.81, along with a fall in the India VIX by 5.38%. On the Call Options side, the 5700 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900, 6000 & 6200 calls, while on the Put options side, 5600 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5300, 5700 & 5400 puts, on the other hand 5800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 6100 & 6000 puts. The entire activity in the cash market was sector specific, while in the F&O space the market participants continued to add on to their short positions in the absence of any fresh triggers.

On the technical side, Nifty managed to close marginally above the 5700 mark, with slight increase in volumes, and not much is to be read into Friday’s close as Nifty rose marginally today due to some clarifications from the Finance ministry as well as market participants booking some profit ahead of the weekend. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5745, 5772 on the upside and 5685, 5652 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee dropped for a second session, hitting its lowest level in over a month and  half as stop losses were triggered in the dollar after rumours of a possible downgrade by Fitch ratings. The Rupee finally closed at 54.90, while the near month USD-INR future  settled at 55.24 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a mixed note, while theU.S. markets have closed on a mildly positive note. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures have closed on down by 0.88 & 1.49% at 110.4 & 90.68 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future closed down by 0.86% at 3.46 $/MMBtu.