Be prepared for volatility

F&O OUTLOOK

The strong close on Friday, accompanied with the negative advance-decline ratio and high cash market volumes indicate that the market will be volatile next week.

Technically, the lows of Friday will be the trend decider. The Sensex made a low of 17,152.31 before closing at 17,291.10, while the Nifty made a low of 4,996.45 before ending at 5021.35.

Hang Seng outperformed the Asia Pacific indices by registering a weekly gain of 5.02 per cent. The Straits Times of Singapore and Sensex were the second and third largest gainers, clocking up returns of 2.64 per cent and 4.39 per cent respectively. Hang Seng, up 2.9 per cent and Shanghai Composite of China, up 1.79 per cent posted decent gains.

However, the Dow Jones, Nasdaq, CAC-40 and FTSE-100 were steady during the week. The Asia Pacific markets seem to have decoupled from the rest and have thus not been affected by the subprime crisis.

The Nifty October futures traded at a premium of 17 against yesterday's premium of 8. The Nifty October futures added OI of 224.60 lakh shares largely on account of September series expiry. Nifty continued with its upmove despite the overbought situation.

Analysts expects Nifty to move above 5100 and Sensex to touch the 17,800 levels. However Nifty has strong resistance near the psychological mark of 5,050 while support exists near 4993 levels.