Market watch: What does the F&O market suggest about trade on January 25?

Activity in the F&O market for the weekly expiry on January 27 shows 17000 to act as support now.

After getting negative cues from the global equity market, the Indian equity market too opened with a gap-down. It tried to move up in the first five minutes of trade, however, soon bears got in control of the market and thrashed all the attempts by the bulls to come up. Nifty 50 suffered one of the deepest cuts in the last two months. It closed with a cut of 2.66 per cent or 468 points. Not a single sectoral index closed in green and Nifty Realty was worst performing witnessing a fall of around six per cent. Nifty VIX jumped by more than 20 per cent to close at 22.82, the highest in the last six months.

Activity on the F&O front for weekly expiry on January 27 shows 18000 is where highest call open interest. Highest open interest contract of 197164 stood at this strike price. The second-highest call option open interest 173398 for Nifty 50 stood at a strike price of 17500, this might act as a strong resistance for this monthly expiry. In terms of the highest addition of open interest in the call options front, it was at 17500 in the last trading session. A total of 143816 open interest was added at this strike price.

In terms of put activity, the highest put writing was seen at a strike price of 16000 (21907) open interest added on January 24, followed by 16500 where (18231) open interest was added. Highest total put open interest (103123) stood at a strike price of 17000. This is followed by a strike price of 16000, which saw a total put option open interest of 95348 contracts.

The Nifty 50 put call ratio (PCR) closed at 0.53 for the day. A PCR above 1 is considered bullish while a PCR below 1 is considered bearish.

Max pain at the end of today's trade stands at 17400.