Yesterday's call landed and then died. I said 24000 holds and the target is 24150 to 24200. By 09:40 the Nifty had tagged 24,220.35. Both calls, inside forty minutes. Then the tape spent five hours taking every point back and closed at 24,078.50, up 26.45. The Sensex closed 77,185.43, up 130.49, after trading as high as 77,646.27. The levels were right. The hold was not.

Today is Sensex expiry, and episode 82 opens with the thing almost nobody caught in yesterday's option chain.

The headline put-call ratio on today's Sensex expiry is 0.74. Read that alone and you would say sellers everywhere, stay away from upside. Now look at where the calls actually moved. At 77000, call open interest fell by 1,44,760. At 77100, it fell by 1,42,700. Nearly 2,90,000 calls covered. And at 77500 the writers added 12,48,220, at 77600 another 14,98,720.  ...