Semblance of hope

CNBC-TV18's Head-Markets Research, Anuj Singhal: Monday was another bad day for the markets. Yes, the Sensex was up 300 points but the breadth was negative again, at 1:5 and the midcap index was down 2% with some stocks going down by 10-20% and in some case like S Kumars, even over 25%. That's a quarter of market cap eroded in 1 single trading session!!

However, there are positive cues to look upon this morning. The global cues are better and the most important cue for me is the FII buying over last 2 days. Wednesday's reported number is USD 133 million and Monday's provisional buying figure is close to USD 100 million. I think there is some sense of value buying emerging.

However, we need to take into account that this is an expiry week and in the past, we have seen positive trends during expiry the week, which have only flattered to deceive. So we will keep our fingers crossed. Also the buying has started only in large cap stocks and midcaps are still reeling.

The rollovers have been low and stock futures have been shedding Open Interest for last couple of days. So we should see April series beginning on a very light note, may be even lighter than the March series. There has been some long rollover in the Nifty futures as suggested by the huge premiums we saw in April futures and also a buy figure of around Rs 1300 cr by the FIIs in Nifty futures.

In individual stocks, clearly private sector banks and large cap IT stocks stand out. Stocks from both these sectors have outperformed for last couple of days and the data suggests that outperformance may be here to stay for a while. At least, till the expiry

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.