Nifty 50 expiry today: Options market expects Nifty50 to end between 25,000 and 25,050

Equity markets opened higher on Thursday and continued to remain in the green despite paring some of the early gains. The benchmark NIFTY50 opened above the 25,000 mark and was trading 0.21% higher at 25,003.25, while the SENSEX was trading over 0.11% higher at 81,832.60 by noon.

For NIFTY 50, which expires on Thursday, the options market is currently factoring in a resistance at the 25,050 level, with the open interest on this call strike amounting to 3.12 crore. The change in open interest for the strike stood at 2.84 crore at 12:00 p.m.

On the downside, the market is reflecting immediate support at the 25,000 level with the Put options at this strike having an open interest of 2.69 crore at the time of writing. The change in open interest stood at 2.38 crore.

At the time of writing, the maximum pain of NIFTY 50 stood at 25,000. 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 continues to trade above its 21-period and 50-period exponential moving averages (EMAs). The index also reflected a put-call ratio (PCR) of 0.92, which indicates a neutral 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 1.36% on Thursday to 13.07.

HDFC Bank, which constitutes 11.03% of the index, traded 1.08% higher on Thursday, while Reliance Industries, which has a weight of 9.23%, traded 0.3% higher. ICICI Bank traded 0.08% higher, while Infosys was down 0.73%. Larsen & Toubro traded lower by 0.51%.