Nifty Expiry: Index makes new lifetime high, NIFTY scales past 24,000

The Nifty was trading 0.47%, or 114 points, higher at 23,970 in afternoon trade, after it briefly hit the 24,000 mark today making a fresh lifetime high. The Sensex too was up 0.5%, crossing 79,000 for the first time today.

The Bank Nifty was trading 0.19% higher having given up small gains earlier in the day, also retreating from fresh highs.

Going into its weekly expiry, the Nifty faced resistance at 24,000 level, as evidenced by the 247 lakh open interest in calls at that strike price. The change in open interest stood at 117 lakh.

On the downside, the Nifty saw highest open interest at 23,800 put strike, a change of 84.5 lakh.

The max pain stood at 23,850 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. However, it is noteworthy that this level is dynamic and keeps shifting when the market moves significantly in either direction.

On the 15-minute chart, the Nifty was trading above its short-(21) and medium-(50) period average and reflected a put-call ratio of 1.15, which indicates the market is fairly valued to slightly overbought. PCR is the ratio of the number of puts to the number of calls of an asset.

The India VIX, which measures volatility, was trading 2.94% higher at 14.46 but remained at comfortable levels.

Among key constituents, UltraTech Cement was the biggest gainer (up 3.2% buoyed by its stake buy in India Cement) while other gainers were Wipro, Grasim Industries, JSW Steel and Dr Reddy’s, all up 2 to 3%.

Maruti Suzuki and Shriram Finance were the biggest losers, both down over 1%.

In terms of biggest contributors, heavyweight Reliance added 27 points to the Nifty’s gains, which was offset by L&T, which pulled 28 points.