SOMBRE

The markets opened on a very flat note, and traded rangebound for the entire trading session, except for half an hour, when the markets suddenly rose and touched their intraday highs towards the end of the session, but ultimately lost all their gains and both the benchmark indices closed on an absolutely flat note. The Nifty and the Sensex closed down by 7 & 57 points respectively. The market breadth continued to end on a very negative note with 459 advances to 1053 declines. On the sectoral front, the IT sector was the biggest loser, followed by the Banking and Pharma sectors. On the individual stocks front,  IDFC, Ambuja Cement, Bank of Baroda, Bajaj Auto & Jindal Steel were the top five Nifty gainers, while DLF, Ranbaxy, Tata Steel, State Bank of India, & Sun Pharma were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, both FIIs and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of mere 14 and 135 crores respectively in the cash market.  

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in both Index futures and options to the tune of 316 and 63 crores respectively, while they were net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of 150 crores and net sellers in stock options to the tune of 105 crores. Nifty future settled at 5668 with just 17 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Options side PCR stood at 0.9 along with a fall in the India VIX by 5.88%. On the Call options side, the 5700 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5600 & 5800 calls, while the 6100 call lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 6000 and 6200 calls. On the Put options side, the 5800 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700 & 5900 puts, while the 5600 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 5500 put. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates Call writing at the lower levels along with profit booking on the Put options side.

On the technical side, Nifty came very close to testing its 250 day support and still there seems to be no let up in the selling pressure, coupled with not so encouraging news flow from the international markets and political turmoil on the domestic front is making matters worst. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5684, 5717 on the upside and 5613, 5572 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell on Friday, tracking losses in local shares and weighed down by oil importers dollar demand. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.33 for the week , while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.36 for the week.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a mixed note, while the U.S. markets have closed on a positive note. On the energy futures front, both the  Brent and WTI crude oil futures have closed up by 0.18 & 1.36% at 107.66 & 93.71$/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future closed down by 0.20% at 3.93 $/MMBtu.