The primary Indian indices Nifty & Sensex have headed lower & lower over the past 11 months & with the budget looming around the corner, investor expectations are high & so are their fears. So what better a time to take a look at the future prospects of the primary market indices.

Let's take a short look at how the Nifty got to where it is now. The indices bottomed in 2009 followed by a rally & then were stuck in a dragged out sideways zone for three years, from January 2011 to January 2014 (as marked in the Monthly chart at the bottom of this post). Followed by an enthusiastic bull run throughout 2014, with the Nifty touching life-time highs of 9100. But soon after failing to move above a critical resistance of 8997 in January 2015, it began to weaken. Though not yet a bear signal, it did show us that the market might weaken or go sideways. This however changed over the next six months.& finally during the first week of July 2015 the market did signal an end of the bull run, as marked in the weekly chart above.

Bank of India is going through it's sixth anniversary of being an anti-investor stock. But you do still hear Indian investors holding & enquiring about the stock. This is because there's a perception in the country's investors that banking stocks & banks in India are a safe bet. Though this is not entirely false in the historical context that banks & their deposits have been protected in the country. But from an investment point of view, this is simply similar to putting your money under a mattress or inside a shoe & forgetting about it, this generates no returns.

The stock has been on a down trend since 2011 & this can be easily spotted on the weekly chart below as illustrated. The stock did show a false trend (as marked in the chart below) during early 2014, while also indicating a failure in trend immediately hence any up move was set to be unstable & fail.

But as with any falling stock it tickles an investors curiosity, as to when it will be an opportunity worthy of profiting from. The following are the supports & resistances on the stock (also marked in the daily chart above) :

Resistances : 157, 140, 118, 107
Supports : 91

The stock has major resistances at 157 & 140, whereas immediate minor resistances at 118 & 107. As of now there seems to be no promising scenario of a price improvement in the stock. The charts show no base formation hence any sudden moves will result in a reversal soon. The supports for the stock are also weak, with a support at 91 which only offers short term respite. From an investor perspective the stock is in a large bear move languishing at it's prices of 2005 & also showing no signs so far of stopping.

R3 - 158.5
R2 - 155.5
R1 - 151
S1 - 147
S2 - 146.5
S3 - 136

R3 - 253
R2 - 249.5
R1 - 241.5
S1 - 236.5
S2 - 235.5
S3 - 228

S3 - 679.5
S2 - 658
S1 - 650

R1 - 643.5
R2 - 629
R3 - 623

Among all the candlestick patterns, the Doji is probably the most discussed pattern. No matter how much someone is in love with technical indicators or western price patterns, the Doji always catches everyone's attention. Even people who are absolutely new to technical analysis definitely knows something about Doji or have heard of it.

The questions to answer in relation to a Doji are - How is a Doji different from other important candlestick patterns, which also appear at the top & bottom to signal trend reversals? And why does the Doji get such special recognition? There are also many such other questions, which I will try to answer in a few of my future posts. Here lets get to know the Doji first.

When it comes to the formation and identification of candlestick patterns, the Doji is indeed one of the most crucial in the larger subject of candlesticks.

Its formation represents the equilibrium between the buyers and the sellers in the market. The opening price & the closing price are the same or have a very minimal difference hence forming a cross like shape. With the closing price finishing very near to the opening price, you will then see either a very small real body or no real body. That is when you have a candlestick Doji pattern.

When the opening price and the closing price of a candle are the same, we have a colorless Doji. But if they vary even within a couple of points we get either red or green colored Dojis. If the body of the colored Doji is very thin, then the color of the Doji candle does not matter & can be ignored.