Nifty ends above 5400 on F&O expiry day; pvt financials up

The benchmark Nifty ended flat with a positive bias on settlement day for the month of July 2010. It has been witnessing a consolidation around 5400 mark for the third consecutive week though it managed to close above this level today.

This was on expected lines as per Monal Desai of Prabhudas Lilladher who earlier in an interview to CNBC-TV18 said "On the Call side you have action at 5,500 and the Puts have kind of eased off position. That's why I feel 5,400 would be a level for expiry."

August series, he stated, will be similar to that of July. "We will gradually inch up. If you see we started off at 5,300 levels in July and gradually end up, there was lot of fatigue also in July, but even after in spite of the results also we have started moving, we have done 5,400. So all I see is a similar trend because the positions in August are being built between 5,300-5,500 strikes at the moment and implied volatilities (IV) are at 75%. So, I do not think people are going to be aggressively looking to ride at these levels."

Decent rollovers were seen in July series; marketwide rollover was around 70-75% (provisional). Nifty 5,300 Put and 5,600 Call added highest Open Interest, which suggests the range for next series. High rollover was seen in Cairn, McLeod Russel, Godrej and Core Projects.

RBI's credit policy and European banks' stress test results helped the index to test a new 30-month high in the July series. Equity benchmarks rallied around 1.5% in this series. Telecom and oil marketing companies' shares were the major gainers; Bharti & Idea Cellular surged 20% each. HPCL and BPCL shot up 17-14%.

On Thursday, private financial, FMCG and select metal companies' shares along with Tata Motors, HCL Tech, Hero Honda, Ambuja Cements, GAIL and ABB led the positive closing for markets. However, telecom, oil & gas, power and healthcare companies' shares along with SAIL, TCS, DLF, L&T, JSPL and Siemens witnessed selling pressure, which capped the gains to major extent.