Rollovers for the near-month November to December derivative contracts on Thursday were higher than the three-month average. Rollover in Nifty contracts was about 74%, about 6% higher than the previous month.
FIIs used this expiry to book profits. ?FIIs have been staying long and rolling over their positions in the last two months. But this time quite a few squared off their positions to book profits,? said Jitendra Panda, senior VP ? retail at Motilal Oswal Securities. Added Manoj Muralidharan AVP ? derivatives, IIFL PReMIA: ?FIIs shorted in Nifty futures but did so more to hedge their cash positions.? FIIs also bought stock futures and in cash to some extent. Equity market as measured by Nifty is down 3.6% for the month of
November till date.
Turnover in Nifty derivatives on Thursday touched Rs 2.51 lakh crore, near its all-time high. ?This is because the open interest in stock futures was at year?s high when the market was falling and these positions got liquidated, which led to the spurt in volumes,? said Amit Gupta, chief manager ? derivatives, ICICI Securities.
Among the sectors, sugar, textiles, media and realty saw good rollovers. Most banks saw dismal rollovers with the exception of Central Bank, HDFC Bank and IndusInd Bank, while profit booking was seen in automobile scrips such as Ashok Leyland, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and TVS Motors. Analysts said investors had rolled over their loss-making long positions in banking stocks such as IDBI Bank, Dena Bank, Vijaya Bank and SBI to the next series. These were stuck-up positions bought at higher levels before the recent fall in their stock prices.
Welcorp, GTL Infra, Renuka Sugars, Reliance Infra, Bharat Forge, GMR Infra and Videocon Industries were some scrips that saw high rollovers.
According to analysts, volatility in the first fortnight of December is likely to remain low and the downside for Nifty is limited going forward.
?In the last couple of months, the IVs (implied volatility) have remained stable between 18-24%. What?s more, global liquidity is highest in the last quarter of the year,? said Muralidharan. He expects Nifty to trade in the range of 5,720 and 6,000 points.