Amidst Uncertainty, Nifty Media Gains the Most
Noble Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr once said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” And, we believe this holds true for the markets as well. Why we say this is because of the movement of the markets which we have witnessed over the last couple of weeks or so. The markets have moved all over the place, changing as per the news flow right from the emergence of the new virus variant Omicron to the RBI monetary policy in recent weeks. The trend of the index is such that a couple of down days are followed by a strong pullback and in the current week we have seen vice-versa wherein the first day of the week was a terrible fall and it was then followed up by a strong up-move in the next couple of trading sessions.
However, Thursday, which was the third day of the rally, was keenly observed by market participants as No. 3 plays an important role in the technical analysis approach. The third day of rally turned out to be a roller-coaster ride amid weekly options’ expiry. As in the first half of the trading session, the Nifty shed about 150 points from the day’s high and thereafter it recovered from the day’s low to end the session with modest gains. One of the key events of the week was the RBI monetary policy. The six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by Governor Shaktikanta Das, voted 5:1 in favour of maintaining the status quo with regard to the policy repo rate. This is for the ninth consecutive time that the rates have remained status quo.
The overall tone that came out was cautious on account of the threat imposed by Omicron and the increased uncertainty factor that continues to remain constant. Quoting Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, the governor expressed more concern, saying, “The global monetary policy is reaching an inflection point, keeping the financial markets edgy. India cannot be immune to global spill-over and spread of new infections.” The RBI also maintained the GDP target for the current fiscal FY22 at 9.5 per cent despite concerns over Omicron. Meanwhile, Q3 GDP has been projected at 6.6 per cent and for Q4 it has been pegged at 6 per cent.
Going forward, two sectors which market participants should keep an eye on is Nifty Media and Nifty PSU Bank. Nifty Media is up by 6 per cent on WTD basis while Nifty PSU Bank is up by over 3 per cent on WTD. Furthermore, all the components of both the sectors have delivered positive return from last Thursday’s close, which clearly indicates that buying interest is visible in these sectors. Nifty Media has logged a fresh 52-week high and witnessed a breakout of horizontal trend line. Along with this, the RSI has marked a fresh 14-period high and also moved above the 60-mark, which validates positive bias in the index. The MACD is above the zero line as well as the signal line.
The MACD histogram suggests bullish momentum. Interestingly, Elder Impulse System (EIS) has also given a strong buy signal in the media index. In a nutshell, it’s action time for Nifty Media sector. Hence, watch out for stocks from Nifty Media from a short to medium trading perspective. Talking about Nifty 50 levels, 17,500-17,530 would be closely watched by the market participants in the near term, as sustaining above this level is important for the bulls. Sustaining above this level would result into the breakout of a double bottom-like pattern and in the near term it can scale towards the levels of 17,613- 17,665. Why is the zone of 17,613-17,665 an important resistance level? This is because the level of 17,613 is the swing low of October 29 and 17,665 is 61.8 per cent retracement level of the recent decline.
