REBOUND

The markets opened on a negative note and continued to trade in the red, for the entire first half of the trading session, but just at the start of the second half of the trading session the markets started recovering on a steady note and ultimately both the indices managed to close near their highest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 44 & 176 points respectively. The market breadth was also extremely positive with 1141 advances to 371 declines. On the sectoral front the Pharma sector was the biggest  gainer followed by the Energy, Midcap, Banking & IT sectors. On the individual stocks front Sun Pharma, Reliance Infra, Sesa Goa, IDFC & Cairn were the top five Nifty gainers while Bajaj Auto, Asian Paint, Axis Bank, HDFC & Bharti Airtel were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side FIIs were net sellers to the tune of mere 45 crores and DIIs were net buyers to the tune of 205 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in both Index futures and Options to the tune of 138 & 48 crores respectively, while they were net buyers in the Stock futures to the tune of 108 crores and net sellers in Stock Options to the tune of just 89 crores. Nifty futures settled at 5766, with just 18 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable addition of open interest.  On the Options side PCR stood at 0.99, along with a fall in the India VIX by 5.05%. On the Call options side, there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 5500 calls while the 5900 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800 & 6000 calls. On the Put options side the 5400 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5700, 5600 & 5300 puts.  The entire activity in the F&O space indicates profit booking in the deep in the money options along with addition of long positions on the Call options side and option writing on the Put Options side.

On the technical side, Nifty managed to touch the crucial resistance of 5750, and the technical indicators are also supportive of the upmove and we may see Nifty convincingly , conquering the 5750 mark tomorrow and may well touch the 5800 mark very soon. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5772, 5796 on the upside and 5702 & 5662 on the downside. On the Currency front, the Rupee edged higher today, the first trading day of the new fiscal year, helped by bunched inflows, but a record current account deficit weighed on the currency. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.26, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.60 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets have closed on a mixed note while the European markets have closed on a strongly positive note, on the back of better than expected economic data, while the U.S. markets are trading in the green as orders placed with the U.S. factories increased in February and Cyprus received easier bailout terms. On the Energy futures front, the Brent crude oil future is trading down by 0.35% at 110.69 $/bbl while the WTI crude oil future is trading almost flat 97.16 $/bbl and the Natural gas future is trading  down by 1.11% at 3.97 $/MMBtu