CNBC-TV18's Head- Market Reasearch,  Anuj Sinhal - What a good series this has been. As I write this, Nifty is up 4% and expiry day volatility notwithstanding, should close the series with around 4-5% gains.

But it’s the internals that please you the most. For the series, IFCI is up 42%, RPL up 26% and RNRL up 18%. Now this is just their price performance. The actual returns would have been 5 times of this on F&O trading. So an IFCI would have trebled your investment if you had the conviction to buy when the series began.

And the data is very encouraging. I am just presenting the basic data here.

NSE F&O CUES
Expiry day stats	Apr series	Mar series
Total Open Int	Rs 73,902 cr	Rs 67,844 cr
Current mth Open Int	Rs 35,496 cr	Rs 38,820 cr
Next mth Open Int	Rs 38,406 cr	Rs 29,024 cr

    

As you can see, there is a good 32% jump in next month’s Open Interest. Agreed, half of it has come because the stock prices are higher, but then there is no denying the fact, that even in absolute numbers, the Open Interest has been much higher compared to last time when there was absolutely zero conviction in the market.

Also encouraging is the fact that after a long time, we are beginning to see traders keeping positions open for next morning. This can be dangerous at times but most rewarding. Take an example of Arvind Mills. While it was up 15% yesterday, the real gainer would have been someone who had bought it on Tuesday and not yesterday as it had a gap up opening and not too much was left to milk. Similar was the case with IFCI on Tuesday.

As a result of this, Stock futures are consistently adding Open Interest without making market look too heavy

The May series begins on an optimistic note. The Nifty is above 5000, the futures are at a premium and the PCR is around 1.35. Now lets hope the global cues remain positive and we can build further gains

DISCLAIMER: The author is not allowed to trade in equity markets including Futures and Options. His only exposure to capital markets is via shares of TV18 and Network18 granted to him as ESOPs by the company and investments in some long-term mutual funds.