CNBC-TV18's Head-Markets Research, Anuj Singhal: If January was all about leveraged positions getting cleaned from the market, the current fall is clearly an indication of how even the relatively stronger hands are now bailing out. Monday’s market was a clear example of this.

While the FIIs sold nearly $150m in cash markets, there was no shorting of Nifty futures. In fact, Nifty futures shed Open Interest with a discount of only 4 points. But the stock futures shed over 2.5 crore shares in Open Interest. Now these were clearly not leveraged positions. Some of these positions are those, which have been created may be even 5 or 6 months back and have been rolled over and over. And some of these players with these positions would actually be still in the money. Looks like even they are now beginning to throw in the towel.

Also, look at the delivery stats. The top 14 Nifty stocks had delivery turnover of over Rs 1600 cr. That along with the high impact costs explains the kind of deep cuts these stocks saw. Some of the strong portfolios are now beginning to feel the jitters and are exiting.

So where does this leave market now? While I am all for low Stock futures Open Interest, we are now getting into a stage where there is absolutely no confidence in stocks, even bluechips. And we need this confidence to return badly. From where will this come, I don’t know but I hope for the sake of the markets, that we do get it from somewhere.