BLEAK

The markets opened on an absolutely flat note and traded rangebound for the initial two hours of trade, but from that point onwards, it was a rollercoaster ride for the markets, touching their intraday lows within the next one hour, then recovering their entire losses over the next two hours and once again touching their intraday lows within the next one hour and ultimately recovering some of their losses and closing very near to their day’s low. The Nifty and the Sensex closed down by 21 & 59 points respectively. The market breadth became evenly balanced towards the end of the session with 726 advances to 762 declines. On the sectoral front, the FMCG sector was the biggest loser, followed by the Banking and IT sectors, while the Energy sector was the biggest gainer for the day. On the individual stocks front, Maruti, ONGC, Sesa Goa, Hero Motocorp & BPCL were the top five Nifty gainers, while NMDC, ITC, HDFC, NTPC & IDFC were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net sellers to the tune of 203 crores , while DIIs were net buyers to the tune of mere 21 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net sellers in Nifty futures to the tune of 1106 crores and net buyers in Index options to the tune of 367 crores, while they were net buyers in both Stock futures and Options to the tune of 120 & 102 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 5572, with 19 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 0.92, along with a marginal increase in India VIX by 1.96%. On the Call options side, the 5600 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700, 5800 & 5500 calls. On the Put Options side, the 5600 put lost the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700 & 5300 puts, while the 5400 put added the maximum open interest. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates massive shorting in the Index futures along with Call writing and some profit booking on the Put options side.

On the technical side, Nifty has gapped down and closed below the 250 DEMA, for two consecutive sessions, but still there seems to be no respite from the selling pressure and looking at the F&O data and international markets,  more pains seems to be in store for the markets. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5575, 5597 on the upside and 5532, 5511 & 5489 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee, rose on Friday, snapping two sessions of losses but the gains lacked conviction as the local currency remained buffeted by fears of political instability and macroeconomic concerns. The partially convertible Rupee, finally closed at 54.80, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 55.09 for the day.

 On the international markets front, the Asian markets closed on a mixed note, while the European markets closed deep in the red, and the U.S. markets also closed for the week with moderate losses. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures closed down by 2.09 & 0.60 % at 104.12 & 92.7 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural Gas futures close up by 4.51% at 4.13 $/MMBtu.