Mkts may remain rang-bound for long

Excerpts from Bazaar on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » ALSO READ See what other CNBC-TV18 anchors have to say Nifty BSE | NSE 30/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

Q: What is the likely prognosis for the Nifty for the next couple of days or even today?

A: We are stuck in a rut here. The markets are not falling because the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on the margin continue to be buyers. So even yesterday while the broader market was drifting and that remains the problem with this market that the midcaps and smallcaps are not doing very well. You did see two crore shares added in stock futures yesterday but the breadth was very insipid.

So you are fine as long as the Nifty is flat but the broader market is outperforming and getting a lot of stocks which are generating returns but this not that kind of a market either. The midcaps have gone very silent and you are seeing the Nifty stuck in a tight range. However sporadically you are seeing some buying from FIIs and I guess yesterday it was in Hindustan Unilever and it was in some of those IT names, which is why the Nifty managed to stay afloat.

A couple of points on the Nifty; one is that the put call ratio continues to be very high more than 1.5 so while there is some put writing which is going on at 5,000 which is good, I am a bit intrigue to see how the 5,200 call is shedding open interest. So its interesting that the put call ratio is gone up to more than 1.5 and that may or may not be indicative of some action so keep that at the back of the mind but otherwise the best that we can say is that we are still stuck in a bit of a range here for the next few days. I cannot see why the market would suddenly wakeup and make a big dart in either direction.