The Hindu Business Line : Bear domination

Bears Dominated over Wednesday's trading activity. The sentiment reading of the tradable counters changed to bearish. Bull pressure on Thursday is likely to change the sentiment reading in their favour. On the contrary, the prevailing bearish sentiment is likely to be strengthened.

Nifty futures: The March month contract opened with a bear gap of around 11 points and went up by around 2 points. However, bulls could not capitalise on their initial momentum and gave way to bears. The March month contract moved with in a range of around 83 points making an intraday low of 3075. It closed with a loss of around 86 points from its previous close.

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The long position in the March month contract exited with profit of 16 points and entered a fresh short position in the morning session. The short exit and long entry levels are placed quite far away from its last traded price. In the normal course of trading, these levels are unlikely to be triggered during Thursday's trading.

Stock futures: The composition and the ranking of the top-10 tradable list had minor changes. Hindalco went out of the list and gave way to Maruti. Tata Motors and Tata Steel interchanged their positions. Satyam and Bajaj Auto moved down to sixth and tenth positions respectively. The top-3 tradable counters in this segment were State Bank, Tata Motors and Reliance.

All the uptrend counters in the top-10 tradable list are likely to be under threat for Thursday's trading. On the other hand, three down trend counters are likely to be terminated. There are three opportunities on the buy side and four opportunities on the sell side. The best is likely to be selling in State Bank. This counter is in up trend. Bear pressure on Thursday is likely to reverse the existing trend in this counter.

Cash segment: The composition and the ranking of the top-10 tradable list had minor changes. Tata Steel went out of the list and gave way to Maruti. Tata Motors and Titan interchanged their positions. The long exit level for ONGC is placed at 1150.25.

Bear domination on Thursday is likely to terminate all the uptrend counters in the top-10 tradable list. On the other hand, three down trend counters are likely to be under threat for Thursday's trading. There are three opportunities on the buy side and three opportunities on the sell side. The best is likely to be selling in L&T. Bear pressure on Thursday is likely to trigger the downtrend in L&T.

(Note: All price levels refer to the absolute value of the shares traded on the NSE. There is risk of loss in trading.)

The author is a technical analyst and fund management consultant.