Nervous ahead of policy

CNBC-TV18's Head-Markets Research, Anuj Singhal - It was a nervous start to the week ahead of the credit policy, especially as it followed a spectacular day that we had on Friday. The volumes were distinctly lower than Friday and in fact the Nifty futures volumes were a good 48% lower than the average. Quite clearly, not too many were willing to stick their necks out and take a directional call

This nervousness was also visible in stock futures. After adding Open Interest at the rate of knots, there was a sense of calm and in fact momentum stock futures lost Open Interest. So you had stocks like RNRL, TTML and JP Associates shedding Open Interest despite the stocks not showing any signs of weakness.

There has been some hedging ahead of the policy with 4800 Put getting active again and adding significant Open Interest, while traders also see the upside capped at 5200 as suggested by the call action. Of course all of this could change if the policy has any major surprise, positive or negative

In individual stocks, watch out for DLF. Its clearly emerging as the stock central to the policy with good volumes and Open Interest build-up and there is a likelihood of outperformance if there is a positive surprise

Among other stocks, HCC is looking amongst the weakest stocks and even yesterday saw shorts at bounce and finally gave up all morning gains.

Bata saw a lot of speculative build-up with low delivery volumes, sp watch out for this one

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.