Nifty 50 Expiry today: Options market considers 25,000 to be crucial level

Equity markets opened higher on Thursday and were trading in a range at noon. The benchmark Nifty 50 was trading 0.35% higher at 25,999.05, while the Sensex was trading 0.25% higher at 81,7311 by noon.

For Nifty 50, which has its expiry on Thursday, the options market is currently factoring in an immediate resistance at the 25,100 level with the open interest on this call strike amounting to 1.91 crore. The change in open interest for the strike stood at 95.54 lakh at 12:00 p.m.

On the downside, the market is reflecting strong support at the 25,000 level, with the Put options at this strike having an open interest of 1.32 crore at the time of writing. The change in open interest stood at 1.07 crore.

The max pain of Nifty 50 stood at 25,000 at the time of writing. The max pain theory shows the level at which option sellers are likely to have the least loss on expiry.

On a 15-minute chart, the index was trading close to its 21-period exponential moving average (EMA) but above its 50-period EMA. The index also reflected a put-call ratio (PCR) of 0.76 which indicates a moderately bullish sentiment. PCR is the ratio of the number of puts to the number of calls of an asset. It is noteworthy that in extreme downward and upward market movements, the PCR may hit as low as 0.5 or as high as 1.8, respectively.

India VIX, an index that reflects the anticipated volatility in the market over the next 30 days, fell 7.2% on Thursday to 17.69.

HDFC Bank, which constitutes 11.03% of the index, was trading higher by 0.57% on Thursday while Reliance Industries, which has a weight of 9.23%, was trading 0.20% higher. ICICI Bank was trading 0.39% lower while Infosys was up 0.23%.