RECOVERY

The markets opened on a mildly positive note, under the shadow of the Banking  sector which was still reeling under the after effects of the RBI’s announcements, but still the markets continued to trade with a positive bias, for greater part of the trading session, but with less than a hour left for the end of the session, the market’s got the much needed fillip in the form of better than expected results from Axis bank and resulted in a sudden rally in Bank Nifty, which ultimately pulled up the entire market and both the benchmark indices closed at their highest point of the day. The Nifty and the Sensex closed up by 65 & 180 points respectively. The market breadth also closed on a positive note with 701 advances to 578 declines. On the sectoral front, the Banking sector was the biggest gainer, followed by the FMCG, Energy and Midcap sectors. On the individual stocks front, ONGC, Reliance Infra, Asian Paint, Axis Bank & BHEL were the top five Nifty gainers, while M&M, HCL Tech, TCS,  Sesa Goa & Ultratech Cement were the top five Nifty losers for the day. On the institutional side, both FIIs and DIIs were net sellers to the tune of 178 and 239 crores in the cash market.

On the derivatives side, FIIs were net buyers in Index futures and Options, to the tune of 30 and 465 crores respectively, while they were net buyers in Stock futures to the tune of 324 crores and net sellers in Stock options to the tune of 91 crores. Nifty future settled at 6052, with 14 points premium to the spot along with a considerable loss of open interest. On the Options side, PCR stood at 1.31, along with a decrease in the India VIX by 5.63%. On the Call options side, the 6200 call added the maximum open interest, followed by the 6100 calls, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 6000 calls. On the Put options side, the 6000 put added the maximum open interest, followed by the 6100 & 5900 puts, while there was uniform loss of open interest from the 5000 to 5800 puts. The entire activity in the F&O space indicates some fresh longs on the call options side along with liquidation of long positions in the Index futures, while there was some put writing on the higher side of the market.

On the technical side, after a brief lull, it seems that Nifty has resumed its upward journey once again, but any further move will be decided by the corporate results and the currency movement. Nifty is still trading above its major support levels on the weekly and daily charts and all the technical indicators indicate a further upmove. The levels to watch out for Nifty will be 6068, 6086 on the upside and 5991, 5942 on the downside. On the currency front the Rupee fell for a second session today, on dollar demand from companies and importers and is now close to losing all the gains it notched up since the Central bank’s measures to shore up the currency. The partially convertible Rupee finally closed at 59.67, while the near month USD-INR future settled at 59.71 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 and the U.S. markets are trading on a positive note amidst better than expected corporate earnings and jobless claims data. On the Energy futures front, both the Brent and WTI crude oil futures are trading up 0.06 & 1.57% up ,at 108.64 & 107.99 $/bbl respectively, while the Natural gas future is trading up by 5.36% at 3.82 $/MMBtu, due to an unexpected fall in the weekly U.S. Natural Gas inventories.