Here are Manoj Murlidharan‘s top F&O picks

In an interview to CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy, Manoj Murlidharan of Religare Securities and Yogesh Radke of Edelweiss Securities gave their outlook on Futures and Options (F&O) side of the market, specific stocks and sectors.Below is the verbatim transcript of Manoj Murlidharan's interview with Latha Venkatesh and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18.Sonia: What is the strategy today?A: On expiry usually we look into a lot of data especially those from the P-Note guys out from the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to understand what exactly is the flavour which is happening in the month. Most importantly, the instruments that are being selected for a short-term trade is ideally an index option.If you see the volatility index (VIX) is favourable close to about 20-21 odd is where it made a high and I feel it can settle down to close to 14.2 but that might happen eventually. So we have seen option writing, 7,400 Put option along with the combination of 7,500 Call option. However, unfortunately, every time if you see the last three-four trading sessions of the expiry, that is the time when there is a lot of stock futures which is bought because there is a reverse arbitrage which is going in the market wherein the delivery base selling is happening in the cash market and we are seeing some stock futures, which are being bought.Ideally because of the stock futures that we are seeing there will be stock specific movement and it would be certainly on the positive bias. However, on the Nifty, we feel the best strategy here is that you can short Nifty future but try and get it between 7,400 and 7,280 odd. That is very short. Keep a stop loss of Rs 7,520 and I am expecting 7,580 points on the down. It is somewhere close to 7,400-7,410 is the target that we have. For traders, specifically who trades on options because the premium is very less, 7,450 Put option, yesterday's closing around Rs 34-36, wait for sometime, you should get it close between Rs 8-12 that is when you buy that obviously no stop loss in that, you get a target of Rs 40 in that.Sonia: You have a buy on Ajanta Pharma futures and a buy on Havells futures as well, just take us through the strategies?A: Ideally CNX-Pharma is somewhere closer to Rs 11,200 on the index and we are expecting a good 840 points odd on that. So somewhere close to 12,050 odd on the CNX pharma and ideally 6-8 percent on the stock specific moves we are expecting. Obviously there are couple of stocks but because it is expiry, so it boiled down to one which might play into the VWAP concept that happens. Ajanta Pharma is a buy at Rs 1,218 for the current month future for January, the stop loss should be Rs 1,198 and we are expecting a target close to Rs 1,270-1,280 on that. The target if we have taken for February futures, would come to Rs 1,294.Havells -- we can either go for 300 strike call option or you buy the future somewhere close to Rs 298 with a stop loss of Rs 292 and we are expecting a movement all the way to Rs 308.Latha: How you will trade ICICI Bank today?A: Expiries are always not easy at all and especially this month -- what I have found was statistically we know that after every 10-11 expiry, you have one expiry which is good 8-9 percent on the positive or the negative side. Unfortunately this is the one on the negative side.Ideally what happens is when FIIs have sold a huge amount of cash market, they would not try -- the intraday movement in the index is not beyond 68-72 points. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and State Bank of India (SBI) contributes to almost 83-84 percent in the Bank Nifty. So unfortunately today there would be some selling pressure from the banking side. I would not buy on ICICI at this point of time.Having said this, in terms of weightage that it has on Nifty, we feel for the month of February as well, we might not see a major downside unlike what we have, we feel the Nifty might be closer to 7,150 to 7,680. That is the range we have for Feb but then specifically today, banking would be a short, you can short a Bank Nifty but the weighted average price is somewhere close to 15,700 odd. So better than shorting Bank Nifty, I would say you go with an option, you can simply go and buy 15,500 Put option.As I said for Nifty, we are expecting that if you are getting somewhere close to 7,470 odd, that is a very good level to short at. We are expecting some shorting intraday, the VWAP -- the last 30 minutes of the trade -- there might be a short covering from the banks but then that might be hardly 100-120 odd points, so we are not counting on that.Bank Nifty would be a short, the ultimate target we have is somewhere close to 15,380 on the Futures.Latha: Take us through RCOM.A: RCOM is an interesting structure. The most important thing is in November, we have seen these levels of Rs 62 and there is good buying which has happened and we are expecting that to be a surprise on the positive side for today. So it becomes a VWAP buy, we would recommend buying RCOM at Rs 62.50 with a stop loss of Rs 60.50 and we are expecting a good target close to Rs 67 is where we might see the expiry for today on RCOM as well.