Daily Call - Aug 21 2008

First of all Congrats to Sushil Kumar and kudos and best wishes to Vijender. Back home in India, spoilt brats in the F&O nursery are going to get 39 new toys to play with today, taking the number of stocks in the arena to 267. Sasken will bow out of the camp when August series expires on the 28th. Strangely, while such illiquid stocks like MRF have been added to the list, which before the announcement averaged just under 1000 shares a day on the BSE, such large caps and liquid stocks like Adani Exports or Mundra do not find a mention in the list.

While the US markets have rebounded on Hewlett-Packard’s better than expected results, Asia is down after Japan reported a fall of 86% in its trade surplus and Crude, which has made a come back in the electronic trade. The markets are likely to open lower and then be in a wait and watch mode and are unlikely to run away in either direction till the verdict or clear advance cues emerge from the NSG meet that gets under way today to consider granting India a waiver of its conditions. The range will be from 4316 to 4530. Meanwhile, mid-caps in the F&O arena will do better .