See Nifty upside capped at 5200 in March: Experts

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It was an extremely dull and lacklustre session for Indian markets. The indices mirrored their global peers and traded in an extremely narrow range. The Nifty ended the day at 5,101, down 22 points. The Sensex shut shop at 17,052, down 50 points.

The broader markets had a weak session too. The breadth was very weak at 2:5. The trading session today saw very thin volumes. Total turnover for the day was around Rs 70,000 crore.

In an exclusive interview on CNBC-TV18, Amisha Vora, Prabhudas Lilladher, Parag Doctor, Chart Advice and Amit Dalal, Executive Director, Tata Investment Corporation gave their perspective on the markets.

Here is a verbatim transcript of their views. Also watch the accompanying videos.

Q: What is your prognosis for the next couple of weeks?

Vora: Rangebound seems to be the most likely outcome at the moment and it would be more dictated by the global events but on this the more we were worrying it turned so sharply in the reverse gear and the dollar started appreciating.

But on the other side I think that the last 15 days of March some tightening in the market will come largely on the money market side and how would that go through would also be important for us to cross that 5,200-5,250 mark.

Q: Technically for the market would you say it is going to hover around this 5,100 for a bit before it makes up in its mind?

Doctor: We have been in a consolidation kind of mode for some time and earlier we had discussed that 2010 is panning out to be a year of consolidation.

The first quarter action is supporting that hypothesis. We have been around 5,000 say 250 points on the upside and 250 on the downside for the last 7 months or so and till we really breakout of this 4,750 to take support on the downside or the 5250-5300 resistance on the upside. It is going to be a lack luster kind of market and the volumes are also suggesting some kind of tired kind of action.

Coming to the short term March series the 5,000 put has having highest open interest so the immediate support would be at the 4,950-5,000 levels. 5100 call as well as the 5200 call is having a strongest call OI, so that is again capping the upside for this month at around the 5,200 mark.

So the reason for this kind of sluggishness is heavy weight Reliance, ONGC and some of the power names as well as SBI in the banking space they are trading in some kind of intermediate downturn so there is no support for the index to go up. IT is only candidate probably Infosys and TCS and supported by the auto names to really drive the market up. So that is explaining why we are having this kind of sluggishness in the market.

On next page: Amit Dalal's perspective on the markets.