What's brewing? IDFC F&O data check

I was just glancing at the F&O bhavcopy and the delivery data and one stock stood out for me—that's IDFC. The first thing I then looked at was its results date and it's actually coming out on last day of this month, which also happens to be expiry day!

Let’s look at the data then. First, the delivery volumes yesterday were 46 lakh shares. That's nearly double of its recent average, so clearly, there was some portfolio buying that took place yesterday.

(Also Read: Our mantra is good assets from stressed developers: IDFC)

Next up, the futures data. Yesterday, the stock added 8.5 lakh shares in October futures Open Interest and importantly 2 lakh shares in November Open Interest. November futures enjoyed a good spread of Re 1 over the October future, which itself enjoyed a decent premium over the spot.

But the data that stood out to me was 105 Call. It generated volumes worth Rs 31 crore, and saw a jump of 6 lakh shares in Open Interest. In fact, the strike now has an Open Interest of 13.5 lakh shares.

Now this data can be interpreted as someone lowering the portfolio cost by selling the 105 Call. But if you look at the options data, its pretty strange that no other strike is really active, which is not the case for other active stocks like Unitech where multiple strikes are active.

The stock is up 10 percent over 3 days, is the street pricing in something which we don’t know yet?

Keep in mind just recently in August, this stock hit a 4 year low after it cut its FII limit to 54 percent from 74 percent, but then it did it to support its bid for banking licence. I am not saying a banking licence is now a certainty for IDFC but clearly there is some positive newsflow, which the market might be expecting.