April Nifty futures up 45.55 pts

DERIVATIVES REPORT

April Nifty futures continued to trade at discount to the spot, but added seven lakh shares in open interest.

April Nifty future rose 45.55 points to close at 1,811.10 while the NSE S&P CNX Nifty rallied 47.75 points to end at 1,819.65. Meanwhile, the implied volatility in call options was 15 per cent while the volatility in put options was 27 per cent.

Interestingly, a number of stock futures traded at a premium to the spot market. Reliance Industries, Tisco, SBI and Satyam were the most active futures contracts.

Meanwhile, HDFC, HDFC Bank, Dr Reddy's Labs, BHEL, HCL Technologies and ICICI Bank saw a significant build-up of open interest. But open interest in Ranbaxy, Reliance Industries and Satyam declined.

April Reliance future settled at Rs 556.20 while it settled at Rs 555.50 in the spot market. Around 18,979 contracts were traded on the counter at NSE.

April Tata Steel future settled at Rs 394.25 while it settled at Rs 392.55. April SBI future close at steep premium at Rs 621.25 while the stock close at Rs 616.90 in the spot market. In the option segment, Reliance Rs 540 call and Rs 560 call were the top-traded option.

While the turnover on National Stock Exchange (NSE) rose to Rs 10,358.14 crore on Thursday compared with Rs 9,600 crore on Wednesday.

While foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were marginal buyers in derivatives to the tune of Rs 3 crore on Wednesday.

The cumulative FII positions as percentage of the total gross market position in the derivatives segment as on March 31, 2004, is 24.21 per cent.