F&O volumes slide

DERIVATIVES REPORT

Volumes in the derivatives segment was down with turnover at Rs 6,607.83 crore compared with Friday's turnover of Rs 7,343 crore. There was an addition of 4.7 lakh shares to the open interest in Nifty futures and the open interest in the July index futures stood at 1.10 crore.

There was also a slight increase in the discount to which the Nifty July futures closed to the spot Nifty. At a close of 1,559.50, the backwardation was at 12.10 points compared with the previous day's 10.35 points.

The turnover in the index futures was of the order of 2,051.45 crore while individual stock futures recorded a turnover of Rs 3,695.08 crore. A total of 2.31 lakh contracts were traded during the day.

In the futures segment, the most active contracts were those of Tata Steel, Reliance Industries, Tata Motors and Satyam among others. Statistics at the end of the trades suggest that most of the stock ended almost at par with their spot prices. "The market was muted," a dealer said.

In the options segment, the most active Nifty calls were those at strikes of 1650 while in put options the active strikes were at 1450 and 1500. The index is expected to find resistance at the former level. The implied volatility has also decreased.

In the cash segment, banking stocks were in the limelight. In the derivatives segment, the bank scrips showed mixed trends with some of the these showing an increase in open interest such as HDFC Bank, while others which reduced their open interest positions were Andhra Bank (down by 10 per cent), State Bank and Bank of Baroda.

Auto stocks also showed mixed trends with Mahindra & Mahindra adding open interest by more than 10 per cent and Tata Motors losing open interest by around four per cent.

According to Sebi statistics, the cumulative FII positions as a percentage of total gross market position in the derivative segment as on July 16 was 20.54 per cent while they were also net buyers in index futures, sellers in stock futures and net sellers in index options. The total open interest of FIIs was Rs 3,868 crore.