Nifty Fin Service Expiry today: Options market considers 23,450 as crucial level on expiry

Equity markets opened higher on Tuesday and continued their positive momentum through noon. The benchmark Nifty 50 and the Sensex were trading nearly 0.4% higher by Tuesday noon.

The Nifty Financial Service index, which has its expiry on Tuesday, was trading 0.57% higher at 23,448.15 at 12:00 p.m. The options market is currently factoring in resistance at the 23,500 level with the open interest on this strike amounting to 68.2 lakh. The change in open interest for the strike stood at 46.4 lakh at the time of writing.

On the downside, the options market is factoring in support at the 23,400 level with the open interest on this strike amounting to 82.9 lakh. The change in open interest stood at 77.7 lakh.

The max pain of Nifty Financial Services stood at 23,450 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-exponential moving average (EMA) and the 50-EMA.

India VIX, an index that reflects the anticipated volatility in the market over the next 30 days, rose 0.62% on Tuesday to 13.03.

The index reflected a put-call ratio (PCR) of 1.25 which indicates the market may be considering the current levels to be slightly in the overbought territory. 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.

HDFC Bank was trading 0.85% higher on Tuesday while ICICI Bank was trading 0.74% higher. Axis Bank was trading 0.53% higher while State Bank of India was trading 0.15% higher on Tuesday noon. Kotak Bank shares were trading higher by 0.18%.