Nifty, Sensex continue gaining streak; 5 things to know before today’s opening bell

Stock markets rose on Thursday and closed the day at record highs once again. S&P BSE Sensex now sits at 46,890 while the 50-stock NSE Nifty is at 13,740. The rally in recent weeks has been aided by foreign institutional investors who have been pumping money into Indian stock markets as the country’s economic activity picks up pace. Broader markets underperformed the benchmarks with midcap and smallcap gauges closing in the red. Sectorally, Nifty Media, Metal, and PSU Bank were the top drags while Nifty Financial Services and Nifty Realty gained.

Global cues: On Friday morning, SGX Nifty was trading 26 points higher. Equity indices in the United States closed with gains during yesterday’s session. NASDAQ Surged 0.84%, Dow Jones gained 0.49%. Asian peers were mixed during the early hours of trade on Friday. Shanghai Composite was flat to positive while Hang Seng traded with losses, Nikkei 225 was marginally lower while TOPIX inched up. KOSPI and KOSDAQ were also moving in separate directions.

FII and DII activity: Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) are not just giving up on India. On Thursday FII bought Rs 2,355 crore worth domestic securities, taking their total buying this month to Rs 35,775 crore. Domestic Institutional Investors (DII) yet again pulled money away, this time to the tune of Rs 2,494 crore.

Call and Put data: For the December series maximum Call Open Interest (OI) is placed at 13,000 strike with 22.08 lakh contracts, followed by 19.44 lakh contracts at 13,500 strike. Put OI is the most at 13,000 strike with 44.84 lakh contracts. The 13,500 strike has 31,47 lakh contracts.

Support and resistance: The short term trend of Nifty continues to be range bound with positive bias and similar type of movement is expected in the coming session, according to Nagaraj Shetti,, Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities. He sees an upside target for Nifty at 13,900-14,000 and immediate support for the index at 13,660. On the other hand, Shrikant Chouhan, Executive Vice President, Equity Technical Research at Kotak Securities said that the market should trade between the trading range of 13840 and 13600 levels. “Sell Nifty if it bounces to 13840/13850 levels. Keep a final stop loss at 13900 for the same,” he added.

Deals: Adani Logistics continued to trim its stake in Snowman Logistics, selling over 11 lakh shares of the firm on Thursday. Ram Family Trust sold shares of Majesco, the smallcap IT firm that announced a massive dividend recently. Shares of the firm were bought by Third Alpha LLP and ICICI Bank treasury account.