Three straight up days, and the market walks into Monday stalled dead under 24,400. Friday Nifty closed 24,383.60, up 66 points, after poking 24,429 intraday and getting sold straight back under the lid. Sensex closed 78,094.64. On the week Nifty added 2.59 percent, the best weekly recovery of the whole of July, and the fear gauge fell again to 11.76, a three month low. Price up while fear died. That pairing is the whole plot of episode 94.

Because under the calm, the professional desks are not acting calm at all. This is the official participant data for Friday. The pros came off their futures long to flat and then bought both sides: they added over 1,55,000 long calls and flipped their puts from short to long, adding more than 2,00,000 long puts in a single session. Long calls plus long puts is a bet on a big move either way, put on while ...