EUPHORIC

The markets opened on a very firm footing today, and as the session progressed the markets gained strength with every passing hour, and ultimately both the indices managed to close up by more than a percent, at their highest level in three months on expectations of continued foreign buying, as part of a powerful rally in global equities. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 72 and 215 points respectively. The market breadth was also positive with 836 advances to 561 declines. On the sectoral front the FMCG sector was the biggest gainer followed by the Banking, Midcap and Pharma sectors. On the individual stocks front, Hero Motocorp, Bharti Airtel, Axis Bank, DLF & ITC were the top five Nifty gainers, while Coal India, M&M, Ambuja Cement, BPCL & Ranbaxy were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, however FIIs were net buyers to the tune of 655 crores and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 729 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side FIIs were net buyers in Index futures to the tune of 540 crores and net sellers in Index options to the tune of 487 crores, while they were net sellers in both Stock futures and options to the tune of 523 and 12 crores respectively. Nifty future settled at 6050, with just 7 points premium to the spot, along with a considerable increase in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.07, along with an increase in the India VIX by 4.17%. On the Call options side, the 6200 call added the maximum open interest, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6100 calls. On the Put options side, the 5600 put added the maximum open interest followed by the 5900, 5800 & 5700 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates further addition of long positions along with profit booking in the lower levels on the Call options side coupled with Put writing at lower levels in order to hedge the long positions.

On the technical side, as suggested yesterday, Nifty continued to rise with the strong momentum built over the last few sessions and there seems to be no let up in the momentum as most of the indicators are still pointing to a upward movement and there is no negative divergence as of now. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 6068, 6081, 6136 on the upside and 6000, 5957 & 5932 on the downside. On the currency front, the Rupee rose today, snapping three sessions of losses as rumoured inflows related to a corporate deal helped offset dollar demand for defence related purchases. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 54.13, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 54.23 for the day.

On the international markets front, the Asian markets closed on a mixed note, while the European markets have closed on a positive note and the U.S. markets are trading in the green on optimism over global central bank stimulus and better than estimated earnings. On the Energy futures front both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading down by 0.43 & 0.57% at 104.98 & 95.60 $/bbl resoectively and the Natural gas future is trading down by1.83% at 3.93 $/MMBtu.