ANXIETY

The markets opened on a very weak note, ahead of the RBI’s monetary policy tomorrow and continued to loose ground since inception and ultimately both the indices closed at their lowest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed down by 55 & 155 points respectively. The market breadth was also extremely negative with 396 advances to 928 declines. On the sectoral front the FMCG sector was the biggest loser, followed by the Banking, Midcap & Energy sectors. On the individual stocks front, Jindal steel, Tata Motors, Asian Paint, Ultratech Cement & Grasim were the top five Nifty gainers, while Sun Pharma, JP Associate, IDFC, Sesa Goa & Hindalco were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, both FIIs and DIIs were  net sellers to the tune of 232 & 101 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in both Index futures and Options to the tune of 24 & 203 crores respectively, while they were net sellers in Stock futures to the tune of 119 crores and net buyers in Stock options to the tune of 33 crores. Nifty future settled at 5877, with a premium of 45 points to the spot, along with a marginal increase in open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.0, along with a massive jump in the India VIX 8.76%. On the Call options side, the 5900 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 6000 & 5800 calls, while on the Put options side, the 5700 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 5800, 5500 & 5400 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates, shorting in the Index futures along with call writing on the higher side of the market and long positions being built on the Put options side.

On the technical side, the downward journey resumed today and Nifty touched new lows and closed well below its support levels with falling volumes, as there was very little participation ahead of the policy announcement tomorrow. The levels to watch out for Nifty, will be 5877, 5890 on the upside and 5808, 5786 & 5744 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee snapped its gaining streak in the last four days, on the back of dollar demand from oil importers and caution ahead of the Central bank policy review that may give cues about its stance after recent measures to defend the currency. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 59.41, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 59.66 for the day.

On the international markets front the Asian markets have closed on a relatively weak note and the European markets have closed almost flat, while the U.S. markets are also trading with losses as fewer Americans signed contracts in June to buy previously owned homes. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading marginally up at 107.59 & 105.36 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future is trading down by 2.62% at 3.47 $/MMBtu.