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C. Raja Rajeshwari

THE trading in the F&O segment was lacklustre the whole week, with volumes dropping every day. Total turnover was down by 42 per cent on Friday as compared with the previous week.

Nifty futures: The Nifty spot closed the week higher by 14 points at 938.30 points on a week-on-week basis. Backwardation was seen in the Nifty futures for most of the days during the week. A market is considered to be in backwardation when the cash price exceeds the future price or a nearby futures price is greater than a more distant futures price. The July Nifty was quoting higher than the nearer month Nifty future contracts. After witnessing backwardation for most of the days, the Nifty futures ended the trading session on Friday near the spot Nifty. The May future was at a discount of 0.25 to the spot on Friday.

Stock futures: This week, backwardation was also seen in most of the stock futures such as ACC, BPCL, Grasim, HDFC, ITC, MTNL, NIIT, Tata Tea, Tata Power and Tata Steel.

# Open interest in auto stocks increased. Tata Engg's open interest was up by around 2.14 lakh shares, which amounts to 8 per cent.

# Open interest in M&M increased by 28 per cent. The M&M spot has been appreciating all week long to close at Rs 115.2 gaining 7 per cent.

BHEL: With the company posting healthy results, the spot appreciated to close at Rs 231.80. It has gained 2.3 per cent week-on-week.

# The May future contract gained 4.15 points and closed this week at 229.90.Open interest jumped after the announcements of results to 10.32 lakh contracts.

# However, the June contract declined in value from Rs 243.65 on last Friday to the week ended at Rs 227, with an open interest of 1200 contracts.

Grasim: The spot has a mixed week, rallying on announcement of the results, closing the week lower at Rs 358.85.

# The May future gained 9.45 points to close at Rs 360. The open interest jumped by 14 per cent to 3.73 lakh contracts.

Index Options: The Nifty calls were more active than the puts. The most active among them were the 940 May, 950 May (both out-of-the-money) and 930 (at-the-money)

# In-the-money 910 May call appreciated in value by 4.10 points to close at Rs 31.30.

# Active puts were 900 May, 920 May (both out-of-the-money). The 930 May put (OTM) closed the week with a 68 per cent jump in the open interest to 1.27 lakh contracts.

# Put-call ratio for the week ended stood at 0.34, indicating that the Nifty is likely to go up in the coming week.

Stock options: The turnover in this segment declined by 40 per cent. The most active calls and puts were that of tech underlying's. L&T 200 may call (ITM) with the spot closing at Rs 203 was among the most actively traded calls. The most active puts were dominated by tech stocks.

Tata Steel: The stock has been moving up through the past week. It closed gaining around 4 per cent at Rs 132. The aggregated open interest across all contracts for this stock jumped 4 per cent. Trading interest was around the May 135, May 130 calls and puts. The stock closed with a put-call ratio of 0.31. Judging by the PCR the stock is likely to appreciate in the near future.

Put-call ratio: Low PCR in stocks such as Reliance, Cipla, Gujarat Ambuja, Mastek, Sterlite Optical and Tata Power indicate that the stocks are likely to go in the coming week. Stocks that had huge put open interest build-up, as indicated by their high PCR were HDFC, ITC, Polaris, Digital, Hero Honda and BHEL

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