By Arun Kejriwal

Markets in the week gone by had a torrid time and one heard people talking of the fact that we had de-coupled with the US Markets one more time. Fortunately, this talk of decoupling lasted a mere 24 hours and it disappeared as quickly as it had begun.

BSESENSEX lost 952.39 points or 1.59 per cent to close at 58,840.79 points while NIFTY lost 302.50 points or 1.70 per cent to close at 17,530.85 points. The broader markets saw BSE100, BSE200 and BSE500 lose 1.48 per cent, 1.44 per cent and 1.41 per cent respectively. BSEMIDCAP lost 1.46 per cent while BSESMALLCAP lost 1.12 per cent. Benchmark indices lost on three of the five sessions and gained on two of them.

The Indian Rupee gained 6 paisa or 0.08 per cent to close at Rs 79.74 to the US Dollar. Dow Jones lost 1,329.29 points or 4.13 per cent to close at 30,822.42 points. It lost on three of the five trading sessions and gained on two trading days.

In primary market news, shares of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Limited listed on the exchanges in the trade-to-trade category on Thursday the 15th of September. Against an issue price of Rs 510, shares closed listing day at Rs 508.45, a loss of Rs 1.55 or 0.30 per cent. On Friday, they lost significantly more closing at Rs 493.75, down Rs 16.25 or 3.19 per cent.

The issue from Harsha Engineers Limited which had tapped the markets with its fresh issue of Rs 455 crore and an offer for sale of Rs 300 crore, created history for the subscription received. The record was for the subscription under new rules where funding has been capped at Rs 1 crore max per applicant and HNI bucket split into two. The issue was subscribed 74.7 times overall. QIB portion was subscribed 178.26 times, HNI portion subscribed 71.32 times, Retail portion subscribed 17.63 times and Employee portion was subscribed 12.07 times. There were 26.40 lac applications.

Coming to the markets last week with the US markets first. On their (US) Tuesday night, they fell a dramatic 1,276 points on higher-than-expected inflation. Further at this point in the ensuing FED meeting slated for September 20-21, the consensus for rate hike is 75 basis points with 74 per cent polled believing that the pedal may be pressed further and the same increased to 100 basis points. This triggered the selloff and caused panic in global markets.

Switch to India on Wednesday morning, where we opened a gap down at 59,147.12 points on the BSESENSEX and 17,771.15 on NIFTY. The openings were the lows and from there we recovered everything at one point of time before finally closing at 60,346.97 points and 18,003.75 points respectively. The net loss was a mere 245 points on BSESENSEX and 67 points on NIFTY. Here people were talking about the decoupling effect. Anyway, all of it seemed short lived and incidentally on Friday, the lows broke the Wednesday's swing low quite comfortably.

Couple of other events that took place and need to be mentioned include the fact that the retail liquidity witnessed over the last couple of weeks saw a setback over the last couple of days trading. Midcaps and small caps which were moving up sharply fell over the two days. Further, money seemed to be drying up or purchases being deferred. Secondly investors wanted to wait for further investment till results for the quarter July to September were declared later on. To add to this is the fact that FPI's have turned sellers over the last three consecutive days and for the first half of September have invested a net 1,956 crore. Domestic institutions have net sold Rs 3,000 crore for the month.

The week ahead sees the US FED meet on Tuesday-Wednesday for their rate hike meeting. While 75 basis points hike is given, even a 100-basis points hike may not be surprising. What would be keenly watched is the commentary thereafter and what it implies for hikes in the two-remaining meetings over the balance part of the calendar year. Further, over the last couple of occasions, US markets have behaved unexpectedly post the results of the FED meeting.

With FED uncertainty, expect markets to remain choppy and volatile. The highs made last week of 60,676.12 on BSESENSEX and 18,096.15 points on NIFTY, will be key levels which need to be broken upwards and sustained for any upward rally. Failure to do so would bring pressure on the indices in the short to medium term. Assuming markets have the momentum to break and sustain we should see upside movement taking the markets to set up a move past the previous all-time highs in the near future.

On the other hand, we have support at 58,100-200 and at 17,300-350 points on NIFTY. The next level of support which could be said as the last hope for the bulls would be 57,575-650 on BSESENSEX and at 17,125-175 on NIFTY. In case this is violated downwards, we could see the pace of fall increasing. The strategy would be to buy on sharp falls and sell on any strong rallies. Markets will remain in a broad range and trade with volatility. Use the same to make profits.