The Hindu Business Line : Sharp drop in open interest of stock futures

Nifty future discount widened further on Monday due to creations of fresh short positions, particularly during the second of the day’s trading. Nifty future now trails the spot Nifty by 58.2 points as it closed at 4894.2 against the spot Nifty close of 4953.

Trading volume dipped to about Rs 36592 crore against Friday’s turnover of Rs 49,083 crore.

Among the call options, Nifty 5200 and 5300 strikes were active while Nifty 5000 strike was active among the put options. The sharp additions in open interest positions of 5200-call indicate that Nifty faces strong resistance at 5200 level.

Stock future

Reliance Industries was the most active counter among the individual stock futures. Other active stock futures include Essar Oil, Reliance Petroleum, State Bank of India, Reliance Capital, Reliance Energy, RNRL, SAIL, ICICI Bank and Infosys Technologies.

Almost all of them have shed open interest positions indicating investors’ pessimism on the market. Besides, all these future contracts were trailing their respective spot closes, indicating creation of fresh short positions on them.

Reliance Capital was the worst among them as the counter tumbled over 10 per cent. Essar Oil February future crashed by 7.75 per cent and saw open interest positions declining about 23 per cent.

FIIs sellers

Foreign institutional investors remained net sellers to the tune of Rs 302.53 crore in the F&O segment on Monday, according to data available with the NSE. While, they were net sellers to the tune of Rs 706 crore on index futures, they remained net buyers on index options (Rs 276.41 crore) and stock futures (Rs 127.41 crore).

In the cash segment, they remained net sellers to the tune of Rs 711.31 crore, according to the provisional data available with the NSE.

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