RELIEF

The markets opened  with a gap up and maintained their positive momentum throughout the entire trading session, barring a exception of half an hour, when the markets slipped into the red , but ultimately both the indices managed to close very near to their day’s high. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 35 and 128 points respectively. The market breadth was evenly poised with 711 advances to 628 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the IT, Pharma & FMCG sectors. On the individual stocks front, DLF, Tata Motors, IndusInd Bank, Infosys & ICICI Bank were the top five nifty gainers, while HDFC, Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel, Grasim & NTPC were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the Institutional side, both FIIs & DIIs were net buyers to the tune of mere 37 and 58 crores respectively in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in both Index futures and Options to the tune of 267 & 1179 crores respectively, while they were net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of 940 crores and net sellers in Stock options to the tune of 223 crores. Nifty future settled at 5595 with just one point premium to the spot, along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the options side, PCR stood at 1.01, along with an increase in the India VIX by 2.91%. On the Call options side, the 5900 call added the maximum open interest, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5500 to 5800 calls. On the Put Options side, the 5500 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5400, 5600 & 5300 puts, while the 5200 put lost the maximum open interest. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates profit booking on the call options side, along with some put writing happening at the lower levels of the market.

On the technical side, Nifty made a smart pullback but as mentioned yesterday, met the stiff overhead resistance at 5610. The overseas markets also added support to the pullback and it seems that the immediate overhead resistance may be overcome by tomorrow, but the upward movement will largely depend on the corporate results season that kicks off from tomorrow and the macroeconomic data. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 5622, 5650 on the upside and 5554, 5514 on the downside.

On the International markets front, the Asian and the European markets have closed on a strongly positive note and the U.S. markets have also risen as better than estimated drop in jobless claims and gains by retailers offset a slump in technology shares. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading down by 1.37& 1.28% at 104.34 & 93.43 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future is trading up by 1.04%  at 4.128 $/MMBtu.