Nifty 50 Expiry today: Index continues record run, here’s what the option market is saying

Equity markets opened flat on Thursday before trending higher to hit fresh highs. The benchmark Nifty 50 was trading 0.29% higher at 26,080, while the Sensex was trading 0.30% higher at 85,424 by noon.

For Nifty 50, which has its expiry on Thursday, the options market is currently factoring in an immediate resistance at the 26,100 level with the open interest on this call strike amounting to 1.3 crore. The change in open interest for the strike stood at 74.77 lakh at 12:00 p.m.

On the downside, the options market is factoring in strong support at the 26,000 level, with the Put options at this strike having an open interest of 1.86 crore at the time of writing. The change in open interest stood at 1.26 crore.

The max pain of Nifty 50 stood at 26,000 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 above its 21-period exponential moving average (EMA) but above its 50-period EMA. The index also reflected a put-call ratio (PCR) of 1.21 which indicates a 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, rose 0.13% on Thursday to 15.41