BREAKOUT

The markets opened on a relatively positive note today, and maintained their extremely positive momentum throughout the entire trading session and ultimately both the indices managed to close at their highest level in more than a month, as expectations of a rate cut at the RBI‘s upcoming annual monetary policy review continued to keep sentiment bullish. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 79 and 227 points respectively. The market breadth was however evenly poised with 743 advances to 650 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the Pharma, Energy, FMCG and Midcap sectors, while the It sector was the biggest loser for the day. On the individual stocks front, Dr. Reddy, GAIL, Tata Motors, NTPC & Axis Bank were the top five Nifty gainers, while TCS, DLF, HCL Tech, Infosys & JP Associate were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 145o crores and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 1269 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in Index futures to the tune of a massive 3716 crores and net sellers in index Options to the tune of 187 crores and they were also net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 134 crores and net buyers in Stock options to the tune of 277 crores. Nifty May future settled at 5922, with just 6 points premium to the spot, along with a massive addition of open interest. On the Options side PCR stood at 1.21, along with a fall in the India VIX by 5.77%. On the Call options side, the 6100 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 6200, 6000 & 5700 calls, while on the Put options side, the 5800 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5900 & 5700 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space, suggests  massive addition of long positions on the Index futures and options side.

On the technical side, after breaking out of the downtrend channel, day before yesterday, Nifty has clearly managed to sustain the breakout and seems to moving towards, the coveted 6000 mark. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5943, 5968 & 6013 on the upside and 5871, 5831 and 5800 levels on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee rose today, snapping two sessions of losses on hopes of renewed foreign fund inflows on the back of buoyant stock market, which gained for a fourth straight session. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.21, while the near month USD-INR  future settled at 54.25 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian and the European closed on a fairly positive note, while the U.S. stocks have risen as earnings topped estimates and jobless claims fell. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading up by 1.13 & 1.68% at 102.86 & 92.97 $/bbl respectively, and the Natural Gas future is also trading up by0.82% at 4.237 $/MMBtu.