The streak broke on IT. 24,000 held. Now the Gap-Up

The BSE IT index lost almost three percent on its own. And here's why. A giant American consulting firm called Accenture reported its numbers and quietly cut its forecast for the year to just three to four percent growth. Accenture doesn't even trade in India. But it sells the same thing our IT companies sell, to the same customers, in the same dollars. So when Accenture says next year looks slow, every fund manager in Mumbai hears the same message about Infosys and TCS. One company in Dublin repriced an entire Indian sector before lunch.

That's the whole story of Friday in one line. Not a market sell-off, a sectoral sell-off wearing the market's clothes. But now here's what makes Monday interesting. While technology was bleeding, the rest of the market quietly held the line. Power Grid was up, NTPC was up, Bharti Airtel, Titan, ITC, all green. The Nifty fell to a low of 23,902 in the morning, kissed that 24,000 mark from below, and the buyers stepped right back in and pushed it back over the line by the close.

So the question for today is simple. Friday was a panic in IT. Was it the start of something, or just a one-day air pocket the rest of the market shrugged off? And the foreign funds are giving us a confusing answer. On Friday, on the official tally, they actually bought, close to 4,900 crore of cash. That sounds bullish. But at the very same time, in the futures market, they did the opposite. They added to their bets that the market falls. They are now sitting on roughly 2,26,000 contracts betting that the index should go down.

That's bigger than it was on Thursday. They bought shares with one hand and sold the index futures with the other. That's not confusion, that's a hedge. They like specific stocks, but they are buying insurance against the whole market. And that pile of short bets matters, because if the market keeps climbing, every one of those shorts is a buyer in waiting. They'll be forced to cover, and that will be the fuel to the rocket. So let's talk about today, Monday the 22nd of June.

First, there is no expiry today. Nothing to pin the market in place, nothing to hide behind. The next weekly expiry is tomorrow, Tuesday. So today is a clean read of who actually wants to buy and who actually wants to sell. Second, the morning setup is pointing towards an up move. The early indicator, GIFT Nifty, is trading at 24,131, about 80 points higher. Asia is hot. Japan's market is up over two percent. Korea and Taiwan are strong. America was shut on Friday for a holiday, but it closed strong the day before.

So the wind is at the bulls' back this morning. And here's my map for the day. We probably open with a gap of somewhere around 24,100 to 24,130. The first job is to see if that gap holds. If Nifty stays above 24,050 to 24,100 in the first half an hour, the bias is up, and those trapped shorts start sweating. The room above it is towards that 24,200 mark, that is where the sellers have stacked the most resistance. So the first resistance is around that 24,200 mark.

Get a close above 24,200, and then 24,300 and 24,500 opens up nicely. But, and this is the trap to watch, guys, if we open higher and then slide back towards that 24,050 mark, that gap-up was bait. A beat below 24,000 and the next support directly is 23,900, under that is 23,800. A gap-up that fails is one of the most reliable sell signals there is. Open strong, close weak, and Friday's IT wound starts to spread. And remember, tomorrow is expiry, that tends to pull the market towards that 24,000 to 24,100 by Tuesday's close.

So today is a setup day. Don't chase the opening candle. Let the first 30 minutes tell you whether the gap is real or not. Now I want to leave you with one idea, because Friday handed us a perfect example of it. On Friday, Reliance held its big annual meeting. The news was fantastic. Record profits for the year, over 95,000 crore. And they filed the papers for the Jio IPO, the public listing as well, the IPO everyone has been waiting for years.

Genuinely, genuinely good news. 4 percent. How does a company post a record profit, announce its biggest IPO, and the stock goes down? Because the market doesn't trade the news, it trades the surprise. Everybody already expected the record profit. Everybody already knew that Jio was coming in. All of that good news was already sitting inside the price, bought up weeks and months in advance by the people front-running exactly this announcement. So when the news finally arrived, there was no one left to buy.

The people who had been waiting for the announcement used it to sell and take profit. There is an old line for this: buy the rumour, sell the news. When everyone already knows it's coming, the announcement isn't the entry, it's the exit. Remember that. So the next time you see a great headline and you are tempted to chase the stock, ask yourself one question first: is this the news, or a surprise? If the whole market already expected it, you might be the last one buying it, right as the smart money is handing you the bag.

So here's where we land for Monday, guys. The streak broke, but only IT broke it. 24,000 held the test on Friday. This morning hands the bulls a gap-up and a tailwind from Asia. Now the gap-up has to prove itself in the first half an hour. Above 24,100, which is the flip level, the gamma flip level, and holding, the shorts are fuelled towards that 24,200 mark. Below it, back towards that 24,000, and the trap snaps shut towards 23,900. So that's not a prediction, that's preparation.

com. If this helped you walk into the open with a map instead of a guess, follow the show on Apple Podcasts as well as Spotify, and share it with one trader friend who needs it right now. I'll see you tomorrow morning, once again, before the bell, for Nifty's expiry. You just got earlier, guys. Bye.