Will Sensex, Nifty rally again? 5 things to know before the opening bell on Dalal Street today

Domestic benchmark indices, after having surged during the last four trading sessions, have now recouped all year-to-date losses. S&P BSE Sensex sits at 41,340 while the 50-stock Nifty is at 12,120 mark. On the charts, the movement of the last few trading sessions hints at further upside. “We observe a sustainable upside breakout of the hurdle of previous swing highs around 11950-12025 levels, which coincided with a down sloping minor trend line. This also indicates an upside breakout of the recent broader range movement of the market,” said Nagaraj Shetti, Technical Research Analyst, HDFC Securities.

Although the market sentiment is bullish, Shrikant Chouhan, Executive Vice President, Equity Technical Research, Kotak Securities advises traders to stay cautious. “Rise in the US markets and fall in the dollar has helped the market to surpass and close above the level of 12000. Nifty is 300 points away from all-time highs and now we have to be more careful as traders make maximum mistakes near the highs,” he said.

Global watch: Stock markets in the United States were again seen jumping higher on Thursday. Dow Jones gained 1.95% while NASDAQ zoomed 2.59%. European indices moved higher as well. Among Asian peers the sentiment was mixed. Shanghai Composite was down in the red while Hang Seng was trading with gains. South Korean stock markets too were trading with losses while Nikkei 225 and TOPIX were up with gains.

Call and Put option data: Maximum call Open Interest (OI) was placed at 12,000 strike with 18.15 lakh contracts, followed by 16.06 lakh contracts at 13,000 strike. Put option OI was the most at 11,000 strike with 25.38 lakh contracts and then at 11,500 strike 24.04 lakh contracts. 

Support and resistance: “At present level, index has a support at 11950-12000 levels while resistance comes at 12180-12260 levels,” said Sumeet Bagadia, Executive Director, Choice Broking. While Abhishek Chinchalkar, CMT Charterholder and Head of Education, FYERS finds  immediate resistances at 12247 followed by the life-time high of 12430 and support at 11870.

FII and DII data: Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) bought domestic securities worth Rs 5,368 crore on Thursday while Domestic Institutional Investors (DII) were again net sellers, pulling out Rs 2,208 crore from the market.

Results today: Aditya Birla Fashion, Alkem Laboratories, Ashok Leyland, Bank of India, BHEL, Cipla, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, ITC, SAIL, Tata Consumer Products, Vedanta, and Voltas are some of the companies that will report their quarterly earnings today.