-Two basket-selling deals in Nifty — of 21 lakh  contracts on Friday, and 54 lakh contracts earlier in the week — hit the markets hard
-One entity said to be still short on 75 lakh Niftys
-Falling put-call ratio hints at bounceback

MUMBAI: Did George Soros short the Indian markets last week?

Over 15 years after he winningly shorted the British pound in September 1992 and earned a billion dollars, local market sources said one of his funds may have shorted the Nifty last week.

DNA Money could not independently confirm this, nor could it touch base with Soros’ operations in India.

But some senior marketmen, who did not wish to be named, said there were two cases of basket-selling last week which clearly was to break the market’s back.

“On Friday, this dealer shorted 21 lakh Nifty contracts triggering a late crash. The same entity had earlier shorted 54 lakh Niftys in the middle of last week,” one source said.

“What the entity doesn’t know is by shorting the Nifty it is trying to bring down heavyweights such as Reliance Industries, Larsen & Toubro and NTPC. This cannot go on. Right now, the entity is sitting on a short of 75 lakh Nifties. So further room for shorts is limited. There seems to be strong buying in Nifty at these levels too. That’s why you saw a premium on Nifty January futures,” the source added.

Nifty January futures closed at a premium of 25 points 5730.

A heavy open interest of over 4.5 crore shares on the Nifty near-month contract remains a cause for concern.

But a falling put-call ratio, analysts said, is a positive sign.

“Whatever the pain is, I feel it is over. The put-call ratio is at 1.04. From this level, I don’t see a huge downside. At the start of January series, we were looking at a range of 5700-6300 for the Nifty, Now that we have seen 5700 on the Nifty, this could well be the bottom for the market. I feel the recovery will be quick. You can see the January series ending with the Nifty at around 6200 levels,” says a senior derivatives analyst from a local brokerage, who couldn’t be named because he’s not authorised to speak.

The Sensex crashed to its fourth biggest fall of 687 points in the last hour of trade on Friday, capping losses of more than 2000 points in about two weeks.

Investors who were anticipating the markets to remain strong, at least till the listing of the big-ticket IPOs, were caught off guard.

“The pain was felt after a long time,” said a dealer.

Are the bears done with tasting blood?

Ambareesh Baliga, vice-president, Karvy Stock Broking, expects some respite. “The US market had calmed down a bit after seeing lows. We could also see some bounceback here, too. I don’t see a full recovery, we may be up by a two-three hundred points on the Sensex. But, the mood is still bearish,” Baliga said.

Manoj Abraham, derivatives analyst with Brics Securities, said Nifty levels of 6200 may be difficult to achieve for now. “There was aggressive call writing around the 6000 levels. So, there may be some resistance around those levels. On the downside, we have not broken the 5678 levels for some time now. That should come as support. “
Abraham said the market could remain rangebound on Monday.

Players are also awaiting new-year allocations from foreign institutional investors (FIIs).

While fund managers maintain the allocation this year would be equal to last year’s, if not more, they don’t want to speculate on when the tap will open.

FIIs have net sold over Rs4,000 crore in January so far.

But these are early days, said R Rajagopal, chief investment officer, DBS Chola Asset Management.

“So FII selling of $2-3 billion can only be understood as a normal profit booking. 2008 would be another year of robust FII inflows, exceeding last year’s $16 billion,” he bets.

n_subramanian@dnaindia.net