CONSOLIDATION

The markets opened on a very flat note, and continued to trade with a negative bias, throughout the entire trading session, but with just one and a half hour left for the end of the day’s session, the markets started rising almost vertically and ultimately both the indices managed to close in the green. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 2 and 9 points respectively. The market breadth however closed on a evenly balanced note with 678 advances to 701 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest loser followed by the Midcap sector, while the Energy sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the  IT sector. On the individual stocks front, Hero Motocorp, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Auto, Kotak Bank & JP Associate were the top five Nifty gainers, while Jindal Steel, Larsen Toubro, IDFC, State Bank of India & DLF were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 226 crores and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 528 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in Index futures and Options to the tune of 931 and 152 crores respectively, while they were net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 561 crores and net buyers in Stock options to the tune of mere 24 crores. Nifty future settled at 5843, with just 6 points premium to the spot, along with a massive loss of open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.31, along with a massive fall in the India VIX by 7.09%. On the Call options side, except the 5900 & 6000 calls, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 5800 calls, while on the Put options side, except the 5700, 5800 & 5900 puts there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6000 puts. In the May Call options side, the 5900 call has added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800 & 6000 calls, while on the May Put options side, 5500 put has added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5400, 5700 & 5600 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates hectic rollover activity just ahead of the expiry.

On the technical side, Nifty clearly consolidated after breaking the downtrend channel and the will be looking forward for further triggers for the next upmove from this level. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5856, 5877 & 5909 on the upside and 5803, 5766 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee fell for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, to its lowest level in a week as importers continued to buy dollars and weak euro posed headwinds for the currency. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.38, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.37 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian & European markets have closed on an extremely positive note today, while the U.S. markets are little changed as investors watch corporate earnings. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading up by 1.47 & 2.18% at 101.78 & 91.12 $/bbl respectively after a data showed less than expected rise in U.S. weekly crude oil inventories, and the Natural gas future is trading down by 1.58% at 4.210 $/MMBtu, even after a more than expected fall in the weekly U.S. natural gas inventories.