A very good morning, guys. On Friday I left you with one instruction and one warning. The instruction was respect 23,800. The warning was do not sell your protection cheap into the weekend, because crude was knocking on 100 dollars and the headlines do not close when we do. Well, the headlines came in over the weekend. The Red Sea is lit up again, tankers and oil sites back in the story, the exact thing the whole market was afraid of. And crude, the number that drove us down for five straight sessions last week, did the complete opposite of the fear.
It did not spike to 100, it fell apart. Brent is near 93 dollars this morning, down about five percent. The driver that broke the market blinked, and our own screen is already pricing it. GIFT Nifty is up by more than 100 points, pointing to a gap up straight into the resistance I told you to respect. This is The Tanmay Edge. You are listening to episode 89. I am Tanmay Kurtkoti. Let's go. So, first the scorecard for Friday, guys, and it was a very good day for us.
Four out of five. com. Now, what happened on Friday? 45, down 102 points, a bit under half a percent. That is the fifth down day in a row, the longest losing streak of the year. But look under the headline. The low was 23,606, and we recovered more than 160 points off it to close, a long lower wick, a proper reversal candle after a five day fall. 77, down 331 points, same shape, it recovered more than 500 points off its low. And Bank Nifty actually closed green, up almost a fifth of a percent.
The banks led the turnaround. The vol gauge, India VIX, ticked up again near 14, so fear rose one more time even as the price bought itself back. Breadth was heavy at the headline, 14 stocks up and 36 down inside the Nifty 50, but the small caps quietly closed green, the microcap index up about half a percent. Sector by sector it was Media and IT green, IT up almost a percent with HCL Tech and Tech M leading, the PSU banks green, and Auto the weakest, down more than a percent.
Recovery with leadership, not just short covering. That was Friday. Now let's look at what has happened today and how the 28th July chain, tomorrow's expiry, looks. 45 sits just under a stack of call resistance. At 23,800 the sellers piled on, more than 40 lakh fresh calls written, so 23,800 flipped from Friday's support into overhead resistance for today. One strike higher, 23,900 is a heavy call line too. 40 crore calls, the single biggest open interest anywhere, and it is still building. So the ladder we open into is 23800, then 23900, then 24,000 as the lid.
Underneath, the support is real. 23,700 holds more than 93 lakh puts, and there is a deep put shelf at 23,500 with more than a crore contracts. So the box is set. Friday's low of 23,606 sits right between them, and that is the bull's line in the sand. Two numbers set the tone, guys. 83, still call heavy, still cautious. And here is the mechanic that decides today. There is a line on the options map right around 23800, the gamma flip line. Above it the market pins and goes quiet and drifts toward that 24,000 magnet, and remember, 24,000 is what we are expecting for the expiry tomorrow.
Below it, the moves speed up. We are going to open just above that line on the gap. So whether we hold 23,800 in the first hour is the whole session, because Tuesday is a double expiry, Nifty weekly and monthly on the same chain, and the gamma builds all day into it. Now the positioning, who is holding what from the official participant file, smart money first, and this changed in a way that matters. The professionals, the pros, are long 29,221 index futures and they added to it.
But look at the options. They pushed their long calls up to 2,06,503, a big add on the call side, and they cut their long puts down to 1,26,665. Read that together. The desk that leads added futures, bought more calls, and sold down its downside protection into a Friday reversal. That is the cleanest bullish rotation we have seen from the pros in the last two weeks. When smart money stops paying for puts and starts paying for calls, it is telling you it thinks the low has held.
The foreign institutions are still net short 2,70,847 index futures, but the same desk is long 5,74,712 stock futures, so it stays a hedged long, not an outright bear. And they trimmed their short calls, they started buying back the calls they had sold as resistance. Even the foreigners eased off the short side into the close. And the clients, the retail crowd, are still long the index and still short 7,02,891 puts. Now they covered almost 66,000 of those shorts on Friday, so they took a little risk off.
But sit with the number. They are still short more than seven lakh puts with no protection at all. If this bounce has legs, that giant short put book is squeeze fuel, it pushes the market up as they cover. If it fails, they are the least protected seat in the room. Either way, they are the fuel, to the whole rally or to the whole market coming down. So the pros rotated bullish, the foreigners eased their shorts, and the crowd is still short a mountain of puts.
For the first time in a week, the positioning leans the same way as the price. And what the world is doing this morning. The overnight board is friendlier than it has been all week, and it starts with crude, guys. Brent is near 93 dollars this morning, down about five percent in a session, and our own crude is near 85. That is the whole macro trade unwinding, because crude at 93 instead of 100 takes pressure off the import bill, off inflation, and off the rupee in one move.
Gold is firmer near 4,105 dollars. 56, still near its low but with the single biggest weight on it, crude, finally lifting. America was mixed on Friday, the Dow green, the broader market flat, the tech side soft on chips, and this morning the futures are pointing to a higher open. Europe closed Friday strong across London, Paris and Frankfurt. Asia is mixed but calm. Crypto is still heavy, Bitcoin around 65,000, Ether near 1,900, not confirming the risk appetite. So this is a crude relief rally, not a full risk on party.
And our own screen. GIFT Nifty is trading near 23,955, up more than 100 points, so we open gap up somewhere around 23,890 to 23,930, straight into the first band of resistance. So what is coming today, guys? The map is short and it is loud. Monday is a normal session, but it is the day before the big one. Tuesday is the monthly expiry and the weekly expiry on the same chain, the one I just walked you through, so every level from 23,800 to 24,000 gets settled tomorrow and the gamma tightens all day into it.
Thursday the 30th is the Sensex weekly expiry and month end as well. Earnings season is still live, and crude stays the one wild card, because the weekend proved the news can go one way and the price can move the other way. So the plan is simple. We open near 23,880 to 23,940. If we hold above 23,900 after the first hour, this is an oversold tape with crude falling and it can extend the bounce, so the first real test is holding that 23,900, and then the big 24,000 resistance can be hit.
I respect that 24,000 line as the resistance into the expiry. I do not chase the gap. I let it prove it holds 23,900 and 23,800 first. Lose 23,800 and we fill the gap, and we are still under the options line, the move speeds up again, and 23,700 then 23,600 cannot be ruled out. That 23,606 is the bull's line, hold it and the reversal is alive, lose it and the five day slide is back on. The vol gauge is low, the straddle is trading around 250, so the market is pricing a move of only about 250 points, a tight band of roughly 23,540 on the downside to 24,190 on the upside for the week and tomorrow's expiry.
And the one lesson to carry out of this weekend is the one that has worked all month. Trade the driver, not the index. The whole slide was crude, and the moment crude cracked the market turned. So today, watch Brent, not the Nifty candle, for the next big leg. And a quick note, guys, on the All Cap book. Friday was a green banks recovery day, and the equal weight book kept its pace, down about a third of a percent right alongside the index, a much better day than Thursday's risk off.
8%, almost exactly with its benchmark. The winners since that rebalance still carry the breadth story. Dia Cabs up more than 20%, Sterlite Tech up more than 12%, RR Kabel up more than 7%, Nuvama up almost 6%. Fifty equal weight names, so something is always working. Over its life the book has compounded at about 44% a year. Not a call to buy anything, just equal weight doing its job. com. The traders who win consistently are not smarter. They are earlier. You just got earlier, guys.
Have a great Monday. Five days of down, then they bought the crash, and over the weekend crude blinked instead of spiking, so we gap up into resistance one day before a double expiry. Hold 23,800 and you can trade the bounce toward that 23,900 and 24,000 resistance. Lose it and fill the gap and the move speeds up to 23700, then 23,606. Watch crude, not the candle. This was The Tanmay Edge. If you found value in this, please share it with one trader friend who needs it right now.
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