Mkts looking weak, no signs of recovery in sight

CNBC-TV18’s Executive Editor, Udayan Mukherjee – It has been a volatile session of trade, short covering has been one important theme but at higher levels the market is not sticking. So as we speak precariously poised at 4,280 but more than the Nifty, which has been very volatile throughout the session, it has been the broader market, which has been languishing.

The midcap index and the Nifty Junior have held 3%-4% cuts pretty much through the trading day; there has been no meaningful recovery. That remains the problem area and once you look at the broader market one has to concede that this has been another bad trading session after what we saw on Friday.

There is an attempt to hold the Nifty out and I am not surprised because this is a settlement week. Already we are headed for a settlement on current reckoning at a level which will not please most of the option guys in the market because I do not think that even ten days back people were staring at a settlement around 4,250 thereabouts.

So there is some attempt to try and see the Nifty at a certain level, which is why key stocks like ONGC, ITC, which do not have huge trading volumes but significant weightages, they are moving around trying to shield the falls in the Nifty. So you can see what the game is in the market right now. But I think the moment you look at the midcap, smallcaps and the largecaps outside the index the game is given away. It is a very weak market that you are sitting in at this point.

Yes, there has been short covering and you would have expected to see that since morning given the kind of fall that we have seen for the last few days but I still think that market is not holding out. There is no great sign of strength despite the weak attempts at short covering that we have seen during the course of the day, which is why even the Nifty is slipping from higher levels of more than 4,300.