The Tanmay Edge | India's pre-market edge, every trading day.

Today the Sensex week settles — expiry day — and by this afternoon every Sensex option either pays off or expires worthless. That's job one. The shadow behind it is the Reserve Bank's rate verdict tomorrow, which is why nobody wants to carry a big bet into the close. This episode is the data-driven plan for trading the expiry with one eye on the RBI. Start with the Sensex, because it dies today. T...

At nine in the morning the screen was red and half the market reached for the exit. By half past three it was green, and Nifty had walked all the way back to 23483.55, up 0.43 percent, right onto 23500. The gap down at the open, 23229, turned out to be the low of the entire day. Every dip after that got bought. One sector did all the lifting. IT, and only IT. TCS closed up 6.53 percent, Infy up 5....

Tuesday is weekly expiry and it opens at the worst possible spot — the lower edge of the range the options chain priced for the full day. GIFT Nifty came in this morning at 23234, down 207 points. Nikkei is falling 1.74 percent. KOSPI is down 2.65 percent. The one positive overnight: Brent crude pulled back from last night's 97 spike to 94.36. That partial softening matters because RBI meets on We...

Friday evening the screen told you India had a terrible day. Nifty down 359 points to 23,547. Sensex down 1,092 to 74,775. The headlines blamed the Iran deal. There was one problem: the screen was lying. Look at Friday's chart and you will see a clean vertical cliff in the final thirty minutes. That was not selling conviction. That was a closing-auction dump. Episode 50 is the story of how a price...

Three sectoral indices touched 52 week highs on Wednesday. Power closed up 3.27%. Capital Goods up 3.21%. Metal up 1.74%. And the Sensex closed down 141.90 points. The headline said red. The chart said something else. One stock did the damage. HDFCBANK down 2.63% ate roughly 260 Sensex points by itself. Strip that ticker out and the Sensex closed up Wednesday. After the close, the market gets Frid...

oday is the rare combo. Sensex monthly expiry and Sensex weekly expiry stack on the same session. And tomorrow the market is closed. Yesterday afternoon something quiet happened on the chain. Pro took profit. Not at the lows, right at the top. In one session they flipped index futures bear, cut 1.13 lakh long calls, and added 46000 fresh long puts. Three legs in one move. Sensex closed 76009.70 si...

The foreign desk did three things yesterday that took six weeks to set up. They bought 822 crore of cash equities. First buy day of May after twenty-two trading sessions of selling. They covered another 10015 short futures contracts. And they covered 118115 short calls on the chain. Six weeks of stacking shorts. Two days of unwinding them. That is the desk that called the top in April unwinding th...

The foreign desk is covering. Friday they trimmed 6198 short futures and 94113 short calls in one session. After six straight weeks of stacking that short higher. The first crack in a position takes six weeks. Friday was the first crack. And on the same session, the professional desk added 186102 long calls and 150735 long puts. Both sides. Paying for movement, not direction. Tomorrow is monthly e...

Yesterday I said buy the dip at 75500 on Sensex. The dip went to 74897. That is 600 points deeper than I said. The level broke. By close Sensex was at 75193 and Nifty at 23654. If you bought 75500 you are sitting on a 300 point loss this morning. Honest grade four out of six testable calls hit. The macro reads paid. The level reads missed. But while Sensex was breaking 75500 in the afternoon the r...

Sensex weekly expiry day and the overnight tape just rewrote the chart. Brent crashed from 109 to 105.73 in the evening session, a 5% crack in four hours. WTI broke 100 to print 99.27. Then Asia opened and KOSPI ripped 6.80%, Nikkei 3.55%, Taiwan 3.38%. Nasdaq closed 1.54% green, the DAX 1.36%, S&P 0.89%. GIFT Nifty is up 142 points at 23807. We are opening 200 points above where Wednesday clo...

Global bond yields are climbing across every major curve overnight — US 10Y at 4.67% near a one-year high, UK 10Y jumped over 1% in a session to 5.13%, Germany 3.19% up 0.86%, Italy 3.98%, Japan 2.79%. When bonds pay more, equities pay relatively less. Foreign desks have a cheaper place to park money than emerging markets. That is the slow leak in three weeks of FII data. Today is one trading day...

On Friday foreigners sold us a billion dollars worth. On Monday morning the Sensex was 1,135 points underwater by 10 AM. Then the same desks came back and bought us 2,813 crore in cash. The Nifty climbed all the way back to 23,649. Today is Nifty weekly expiry. The buyers are sitting in the chair. THE OVERNIGHT SETUP. Monday gave us three macro warning lights — Brent crude 111 dollars, rupee at 96...

Saturday Donald Trump told Iran to get moving or there will be nothing left. Brent crude climbed 4 dollars over the weekend to 113. Bitcoin dropped 1300 dollars to 78030. The market we left on Friday is not the market we open today. On Friday something rare happened on the Nifty option chain. The biggest desk bought 117484 call contracts AND 113445 put contracts in the same session. 230000 fresh o...

Yesterday Sensex closed 75398.72 up 789. The biggest single day move since the 8th of April. Nifty closed 23689.60 plus 1.18 percent. BSE Metal led at plus 3.30. BSE Focused IT bled minus 1.77. But the move wasn't the story. The hedge was. Proprietary desks flipped 147656 call contracts in one session. From 71438 short calls Wednesday to 76218 long calls Thursday. Same desk. One day. Largest call-...

Yesterday Sensex closed at 74608.98. Up 49 points. Half a percent of a percent. From the outside it looked like the bleeding from Tuesday's crash had simply stopped. From the inside, Wednesday was the day the trade flipped. Proprietary desks made three bullish moves on the same session. Covered 113051 short call positions. Sold 45229 long put positions. Added 5095 long futures positions. One bulli...

Three sessions ago, 24000 was the resistance. Tuesday it became 23500. Smart money does not slide a level 500 points lower in one session because they are predicting a move. They do it because they are reacting to one. And what they are reacting to is buyers waiting underneath. In Episode 38 of The Tanmay Edge, I walk you through exactly what happened on Tuesday, why the macro lane is firing, what...

Brent cracked 105 overnight. The escalation lane fired. GIFT Nifty opened down 117. India 10Y bid 7 basis points. Yesterday Pro flipped net calls from 58737 long to 30428 short in one session. The wall at 24000 multiplied 6x in a single day. The chain wrote the pin at 23800 and the fence at 23500. Tuesday is Nifty weekly options expiry. Two trades in one expiry day. Vol first. Pin second. Long gam...

The Iran tail came back. Brent jumped 3.31 percent over the weekend from 101.29 Friday settle to 104.65 Monday open. GIFT Nifty 24060.50 down 179 puts spot near the 24000 floor on the first tick. The wing the chain priced Friday is about to pay this morning. The chain wrote 6111545 contracts at 24200 in one session Friday. Two walls 24500 and 25500 one thousand points apart. Three floors 24000 235...

Yesterday's EP34 pin trade paid 5 for 5. Sensex 77,844 inside the 78,000 magnet by 44 points. Pin held. Wing held. Bank Nifty held. Best card S2 has produced. Then I opened the next-week chain. The wall doubled across 24,400 to 25,400. The floor slid down 500 points to 23,500. The pin moved up 50 points to 24,300 to 24,400. The chain priced a 5-day range of 23,924 to 24,776. Then Brent reclaimed 1...

Sensex expiry day. The chain has voted: pin 78,000, floor 77,500, cap 78,500. FIIs are sitting on 1,94,099 short index futures contracts. The market gave them a +1.22% rally yesterday — they covered 4,014. Two percent. The squeeze hasn't started. Global tape firing — Nasdaq +2%, Nikkei +5.67%, Europe +2% across the board. GIFT Nifty +170 pts implied gap-up to ~78,500. Crude collapse holds at $101....

Yesterday I called the pin at 24000. Nifty closed 24051. Inside the zone by 51 points. Today the wall fails. Brent cracked 5 dollars 73 cents overnight to 108.03. KOSPI ripped plus 5.87 percent on the Children's Day return. Hang Seng flipped green. GIFT Nifty up 193 points to 24303 = implied gap plus 252 above Tue close. Pro three legs bullish into the close (covered 19394 short calls, added 5634...

The market gives you two trades from the same chain. Yesterday's wing paid. Today's pin pays. Same desks. Same open interest. Different strikes doing different work. In this episode I walk through what happened in the last 18 hours. Brent jumped 5 dollars overnight. The rupee broke 95. Hang Seng flipped negative. Yet the chain still wants to settle at 24000. Why? Because Pro wrote calls AND held f...

Three days off the screen. The 76750 PE wing under Thursday's short straddle paid 492 points intrinsic at the intraday low and expired worthless at close. The straddle writer kept 210 points net premium and walked through the Hormuz tail without forced cover. That is the wing-paid mechanic. Asia came in hot Monday. KOSPI plus 3.93. Taiwan plus 4.02. Hang Seng plus 1.58. Brent backed off the Hormuz...

The Sensex 30-April future closed Wednesday at 77,444 — an 80-point discount to spot 77,525, on a green-day expiry-eve. That doesn't happen unless institutional money is committed to the pin. The pin is at 77,300 ATM. Straddle 596.85. IV crushed to 15.52%. One standard deviation times 1.25 wings: 76,750 and 78,242. Sell the 77,300 ATM straddle with 76,750 PE and 78,000 CE wings. If the pin holds,...

"The smartest desk on the chain doesn't take a side. It clears the book." Tuesday's monthly expiry printed and Pro went from plus 24000 long futures to plus 900. Sold 95000 net long calls. Both directional legs to flat by the bell. This is not bearish. It is a reset. Day one of May series opens with no smart money tell. The 24000 magnet rebuilt fresh at 7.38 million lines. New put floor 23800. New...