Nifty ends flat with positive bias

Key Indian benchmark Nifty ended the trading session flat with positive bias on Monday, amid mixed global cues. The index traded in green for the most part of day taking support from Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar's statement that the growth rebound shows that the economy has come out of the woods and economic expansion for the full year will come in at 6.5-7 percent. Some comfort also came with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's statement that the GST has made doing business easier for traders, to spread business activities in the country. He added the market place for traders had opened the horizons and there is lesser tax compliance burden. Separately, chief statistician TCA Anant said that that growth slowdown in India has bottomed out and the rebound in manufacturing is going to sustain. However, traders remained cautious ahead of RBI monetary policy meeting which is scheduled to begin on December 05. Some anxiety also came with the report that CPI inflation is expected to firm up in the coming months driven by cyclical recovery in the economy and further implementation of pay commission-related hikes by states.

Traders were seen piling up positions in IT, Media and FMCG stocks, while selling was witnessed in Pharma, Realty and Auto stocks. The top gainers from the F&O segment were Biocon, Indraprastha Gas and MindTree. On the other hand, the top losers were Reliance Naval and Engineering, Reliance Communications and Escorts. In the index option segment, maximum OI continues to be seen in the 10200-10700 calls and 9800-10300 puts indicating this is the trading range expectation.

The India Volatility Index (VIX), a gauge for market’s short term expectation of volatility increased by 0.41% and reached 14.85. The 50-share Nifty was up by 5.95 points or 0.06% to settle at 10,127.75.

Nifty December 2017 futures closed at 10159.25 on Monday, at a premium of 31.50 points over spot closing of 10,127.75, while Nifty January 2018 futures ended at 10191.15, at a premium of 63.40 points over spot closing. Nifty December futures saw an addition of 0.64 million (mn) units, taking the total outstanding open interest (OI) to 18.39 mn units. The near month derivatives contract will expire on December 28, 2017.

From the most active contracts, Biocon December 2017 futures traded at a discount of 13.70 point at 503.30 compared with spot closing of 517.00. The numbers of contracts traded were 28,198.

Infosys December 2017 futures traded at a premium of 2.10 points at 986.50 compared with spot closing of 984.40. The numbers of contracts traded were 25,356.

Tata Motors December 2017 futures traded at a premium of 0.65 points at 404.90 compared with spot closing of 404.25. The numbers of contracts traded were 16,854.

The Nifty Put Call Ratio (PCR) finally stood at 0.87 for December month contract. The top five scrips with highest PCR on OI were Berger Paints India (2.08), United Breweries (1.26), V-Guard Industries (1.26), Repco Home Finance (1.20) and Hero Motocorp (1.20).

Among most active underlying, Biocon witnessed an addition of 1.66 million units of Open Interest in the December month futures contract, followed by Infosys witnessing  a contraction of 0.24 million units of Open Interest in the December month contract, Reliance Industries witnessed an addition of 0.67 million units of Open Interest in the December month contract, Tata Motors witnessed a contraction of  0.16 million units of Open Interest in the December month contract and DLF witnessed  an addition of 1.43 million units of Open Interest in the December month future contract.