Friday's option board was built for a rally: calls bought back, puts written, volatility crushed. It took the market one session to take the whole thing apart. Yesterday 659.17 lakh calls were written and 189.23 lakh puts were bought back, and the put call ratio fell from 0.844 to 0.556.

THE RECEIPT. On record yesterday: the question was not whether we take 24,000, it was whether we reclaim 23,900, and if we failed there the people who wrote puts at that strike on Friday were the ones in trouble. The high was 23,890, ten points short. The 23,900 put went from 59.85 to 128.80, more than doubling, and 75.84 lakh of open interest came off as the writers bought themselves out.

THE TAPE. Nifty 23,779.15, down half a percent. It opened 23,883.15, made its high in the first few minutes and fell all day to 23,737.90. Thirteen up and thirty se ...