Pepper market heads south on bearish activities

Pepper market on Monday declined on bearish activities despite positive open interest.

All the contracts dropped after witnessing high volatility. In the opening session itself it shot up and hit the highest price of the day and then after remaining highly volatile it touched the lowest price of the day in the forenoon session itself. There was a difference of nearly Rs 700 and remained highly volatile and moved up and ended below the previous closing.

“Again it has proved that the fundamentals have nothing to do with the market and it is running on the whims and fancies of the operators”, market sources told Business Line .

Leading local brokers sent out buy calls in the morning and to counter that their counterparts at the national level sent out sell calls which in turn pulled the market down.

Activities were limited effecting a drop in total volume. The total open interest moved up marginally and yet the market dropped, they said.

There was no selling pressure on the spot. Not much activities were reported from the farm grade front. However, in tandem with the futures market, the spot prices too were down by Rs 200 a quintal.

May contract on the NCDEX dropped by Rs 270 to close at Rs 28,881 a quintal. June and July fell by Rs 234 and Rs 185 respectively to close at Rs 29,531 and Rs 30,071 a quintal.

Total turn over dropped by 613 tonnes to 11,605 tonnes. Total open interest moved up by 12 tonnes to 16,995 tonnes.

May open interest fell by 669 tonnes to 8,685 tonnes while June increased by 675 tonnes to 7,272 tonnes. July declined by 5 tonnes to 762 tonnes.

Spot prices in tandem with the futures market trend dropped by Rs 200 to close at Rs 27,200 (ungarbled) and Rs 28,000 (MG 1) a quintal.

Indian parity in the international market was at $6,775 a tonne (c&f) and remained nearly competitive. The overseas trend will, however, be known by tomorrow, they said.

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