Nifty hits century; 17,400 PE options witness huge OI addition

Market Update at 1:30 PM: Nifty touched a milestone of 17,500 on Wednesday as it trades up by nearly 120 points. After opening the session in positive terrain, the index has gone from strength to strength to touch the milestone of 17,500. As we had mentioned in our morning update, it has maintained its rhythm of higher highs & higher lows on the lower timeframe.

What’s more interesting is to see that it is a broad-based rally as the majority of the sectors have participated with Nifty IT and Nifty PSU Bank being the top gainers. The advance-decline ratio is healthy with nearly 1,298 stocks trading in the green while only 608 stocks are trading in the red.   

Interestingly, the 17,400 Put option has seen a massive addition in the open interest on Wednesday. Nearly 68.54 lakh shares in the open interest have been added in today’s session itself, which is almost two-third of the overall open interest in the 17,400 Put strike. It clearly suggests that the trend is strong as long as Nifty stays above 17,400 levels.   

Market Update at 10:10 AM: It’s a celebration time on D-Street as in the early deals, Nifty has hit a fresh all-time high and surpassed its previous all-time high, which was logged on Tuesday. Nifty is trading up by 0.37 per cent at 17,444 levels. Interestingly, the index heavyweight - Reliance Industries has contributed most in Nifty’s kitty i.e. nearly 15 points.   

Among the sectoral indices, all the sectors are trading in green with Nifty Media leading from the front. Buying interest is witnessed in the broader markets as well with Nifty Midcap 100 and Smallcap 100 being up by 0.59 per cent & 0.39 per cent, respectively.   

Nifty touched a fresh all-time high level of 17,438.55; however, it failed to sustain at higher levels and slipped lower from the day’s high to end the day with modest gains of 0.14 per cent.   

The broader markets witnessed good buying interest wherein, Nifty Midcap 100 jumped more than 1 per cent thereby, outperforming the frontline gauge. However, the real show stopper of the day was the stock of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL). The stock fired on all cylinders and soared nearly 40 per cent.   

On the daily chart, Nifty formed a bear candle as its closing was lower than the opening level and interestingly, it recorded its lowest daily range of 71.5 points on Tuesday, which is the lowest in the last one month.   

Moreover, the index has been consolidating without any decisive move in the last six trading sessions. The last six days' consolidation is in the range of just 184 points. During the current uptrend, generally, what we have witnessed is that Nifty, after consolidating for five to six sessions, registers a breakout.   

Despite trading in the range, interestingly, Nifty has not given a close below its prior bar low and it is trading above the important short-term moving averages and it has not given any kind of weak signal on the chart. Hence, be with a bullish bias as long as the level of 17,250 is protected on the downside.