Markets and News

The 5th week of August and the expiry week too. The series that started on 27th July is coming to an end this week on 30th August. The economy looks healthy both in US and India. US Fed chairman Powell has come out and said some good things at Jackson hole summit. He said that growth in US is steady and slow the rate hike is also going to be gradual. The news was well taken and Dow Jones closed another 130 points up and dollar has weakened. That made all the currencies grow stronger and Asia is green today with Hong Kong gaining more than 400 points. 

Domestic Cues

On the domestic front, today is the day and the deadline set by RBI in February to refer all the debt-ridden companies to NCLT and that includes some 74 odd companies with 2000 Cr plus stressed assets. There are around 7 companies in power sector that got rescued and Allahabad High Court is set out come out with a judgment on some more power companies today and Finance sector as such will be in the focus today on account of this. This is a huge positive for the banking sector and with World economy and NCLT being positive, the only negative is coming from Crude. Brent Crude has touched 76 dollars again and that would mean Petrol hikes are back again. That will be a huge negative. So, 2 positives and 1 negative to start the day.

Derivatives Action

On the derivatives front, things go stabilized in the Futures markets as the long positions still continue to be at 51% and that shows that there are equal number of buyers and sellers for the entire last week. The real action however is happening in the Options market where after hitting a Put call ratio of 1.73 on Thursday evening fell to 1.63 by Friday evening and some major unwinding of positions has happened on put side. 11500 put saw 5.6 lakh positions unwinding, 11400 put saw 4.6 lakh positions unwound. 11200 saw a maximum 6.2 lakh positions unwound. 
The result of all this is 11000 put is back as the strike with highest accumulated open interest with 41.7 lakh positions. 11400 which was highest for few days because of unwinding of positions fell to 37.3 lakh positions. 11500 put has higher accumulated open interest at 40.1 lakh positions. On the call side 11600 call added 3.9 lakh contracts while 11650 calls added 3.6 lakh contracts while 11750 call added 4.2 lakh contracts which are the maximum. Now 11600 call and 11000 put are the roof and the floor of the market respectively. 

What is the Nifty call for the day?

Asia is very green so we will open green again close to 11600 levels and what happens after that is very important. There can be profit booking around 11600-11630 levels and that might again push Nifty to 11580 levels. How much effect Crude will have on the down side and how much positivity does global factors have on upside needs to be seen. 11550 is a support and 11630-11650 a very strong resistance. In this tug of war, I prefer to stay aside and look at things. We already have two positions and both are in profits as of now and so there is no need to unnecessarily venture into taking positions today.