With the equity markets in a overdrive, nobody wants to bet on prices falling, especially by going short on the indices.

The ratio of put to call contracts on the National Stock Exchange's Nifty has declined from 1.05 on December 15 to 0.57 on Friday, indicating that traders with a bearish outlook on the index are retracting to their lairs.

A ratio more than 1 indicates there are more put (sell) contracts than call (buy) contracts.

An investor with a put option is essentially buying a contract that will yield profits if the price of the scrip falls whereas a call option buyer profits if prices rise. The decline in put contracts implies no one is betting on a falling market.

"We generally see there is a skewed interest towards buying puts when the markets rise very sharply. But it is very positive that the put-call ratio has shown an increased positive bias for calls, particularly towards the end of the week," said an analyst with an institutional brokerage house.

Several traders lost huge sums of money last week remaining sellers on the market when the markets rose sharply. Traders lost close to Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion) by going short on Nifty puts, the market estimates.

Even foreign institutional investors continue to remain on the buy side. FII open interest in Nifty futures has risen to 32.9 per cent of the total contracts.

The FIIs has bought 10,867 contracts out of the market wide open interest of 33,028 contracts. The FII open interest, in value terms, however fell marginally in spite of the expiry of December contract as the markets have registered a sharp run up in the recent week.

Meanwhile, the rollover in the stock futures segment has been extremely robust, with many stocks recording a 80 per cent roll over (investors moving their December positions to January or later).

These are some of the highest rollover percentages seen in recent times, traders said. A high rollover is an extremely positive indicator, as it indicates a high degree of confidence in the market for the following month.

The stocks, which recorded over a 90 per cent plus rollover included Arvind Mills, BEL, Grasim and Hindalco. The high rollover is evident in metal, banking and PSU stocks, traders said.

Some stocks such as Arvind Mills, GAIL and a few small banks have recorded a week-on-week rise in open interest, notwithstanding the expiry of the December contracts. This points to a trend of accumulation in these stocks.