Commentary Financial News

IRCTC’s journey can be pleasant if non-convenience fee surprises At an all-India level, the average cement price fell around 3% month-on-month in July to five-year low of ₹313 per bag, according to IIFL Securities Ltd. One cement bag weighs 50 kilograms. Cement prices have fallen further in August in southern markets – by ₹10-15 a bag – while prices are steady in other markets, said the IIFL report dated 9 August.

OpenAI said on Friday it had taken down accounts of an Iranian group for using its ChatGPT chatbot to generate content meant for influencing the U.S. presidential election and other issues. The operation, identified as Storm-2035, used ChatGPT to generate content focused on topics such as commentary on the candidates on both sides in the U.S. elections, the conflict in Gaza and Israel's presence at the Olympic Games and then shared it via social media accounts and websites. Investigation by the Microsoft-backed AI company showed that ChatGPT was used for generating long-form articles and shorter social media comments.

The recent budget presented by the finance minister saw a spurt of adverse commentary on the proposals relating to capital gains transactions, particularly with reference to the removal of indexation benefits. In response, the government partially restored the benefits to a segment of taxpayers.

Reserve Bank of India's commentary and inflation forecasts may not provide visibility on when rates may fall but swap traders are betting on a 50 basis-point cut in local borrowing costs starting February 2025 as central banks globally start tilting towards a softer monetary policy. A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.

FSN E-Commerce Ventures, which operates beauty and fashion omnichannel retailer Nykaa, is expected to report healthy revenues during the first quarter ended June 2024, driven by the BPC (beauty and personal care) and fashion businesses. Revenue for the reporting quarter is seen growing 26% year-on-year, according to an average estimate of three brokerages. Net profit however is estimated to surge up to 429%.

«On the NBFC side, we are more positive on, I would say, non-consumer NBFCs which are more catered towards CV cycle or power sector and we are also diversifying within financials towards non-lenders like insurance, this is one sector where we think this is ripe for some kind of outperformance over the next two to three years,» says Ashutosh Bhargava, Nippon India Mutual Fund. A quick view on the way policy pared out today. There was expectation that there would be some stance change at least, that did not happen, forget about the rates but it appeared that the governor was very steadfast on controlling inflation and some commentary again on top-up loans and deposits continues to remain an issue. What were your key observations from the policy commentary today? Ashutosh Bhargava: So, going into this policy, it is not that there was a consensus of a rate cut, but there was definitely an expectation of some change in stance towards more neutral, but that has not happened. It seems that the RBI is very focused on this 4% inflation target and overlooking already below 4% core inflation.

rupee rose marginally in early trading on Thursday, aided by gains in most Asian currencies, with dollar-rupee forward premiums also ticking up ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) monetary policy decision. The rupee was at 83.93 against the U.S. dollar as of 09:30 a.m. IST, compared with its previous close at 83.9550.

Anurag Singh, Founder & Managing Partner, Ansid Capital, says fundamentals do not change like that. The unwinding of carry-trade has happened now. Hopefully, that is behind us. People will not again try and play smart on this, borrowing in yen and investing in US or global markets. What do you make of first the big global meltdown on Monday and the recovery thereafter? Anurag Singh: I will not pretend to act as if I saw this coming. I was also caught by surprise. I was traveling in the last couple of weeks and was not prepared for it. Well, all fingers point to the yen carry trade. Now, of course, everybody knows how that works and looks like that because it was a quick technical selloff.

Canadian markets are catching up to a global selloff on Tuesday that rocked major stock indices around the world the day before.

Wall Street's main indexes rose in volatile trading on Tuesday, as investors looked for bargains after a rout in the previous session, while dovish rate commentary from Federal Reserve officials also lifted the mood. Most megacap and growth stocks, which together lost $200 billion in market value on Monday, gained as Nvidia bounced back 2.3%.

«Also in terms of the commodity price momentum, because this quarter, there is almost 200 bps expansion in the gross margin, so how the commodity price momentum is and whether we should expect such kind of gross margin expansion in the quarters ahead or not, these are something which will be very important from the commentary perspective from the management,» says Kaustubh Pawaskar, Sharekhan, on Britannia’s Q1 Results. ET Now: Let us take your first take on the numbers that have come out of Britannia, from our overall estimates it is revenue that is in line, PAT is in line and margins are also in line. What is your overall assessment?

Federal Reserve on Wednesday hinting at the likelihood of interest rate cut in September. At 7:45 pm, the October MCX gold futures were trading at Rs 70,350, up by Rs 695 or 1%. It hit the day’s high of Rs 70,489.

The recent federal lawsuits against famous short seller Andrew Left draw attention to the roles that financial influencers have in guiding investors’ decision making – and the wide range in the quality of the information available online.

MUMBAI : Hindustan Unilever Ltd’s (HUL's) shares dropped close to 2% on Wednesday, which can be attributed to profit booking given that the stock had gained about 12% in the past one month in anticipation of potential positive announcements in the Union Budget 2024-25. It should be noted that the commentary of HUL’s management while announcing the June quarter (Q1FY25) results on Tuesday after market hours, though not too exciting about business conditions, is largely positive. The management said it expects FMCG sector and rural demand to continue improving gradually.

Tech Mahindra is likely to see a muted revenue growth in the first quarter ended June 2024, impacted by seasonal fall in Comviva business. Revenue for the reporting period should decline 1.6% year-on-year, according to an average estimate of four brokerages. Meanwhile, sequential revenue growth is seen anywhere between 0.3-0.9%.

quarterly results for the April-June 2024 period on Wednesday. Key results to watch out include L&T, Axis Bank, Bajaj Finserv and SBI Life. Apart from the above, companies like CMS Info Systems, Craftsman Automation, DCB Bank, Epack Durable, Federal Bank, Go Fashion, Jindal Steel, JK Paper, Mahindra Lifespace, KPIT Technologies, Ramco Systems among others will also announce their results.

«I do not want to give it a name, but I think this was very serious. And therefore, after all, as we say economics is a handmaiden of politics. If you get politics wrong, economics is just left behind. So, this is a brilliant balancing act of being equitable, at the same time not compromising at all on the glide path to growth and to Viksit Bharat,» says Vallabh Bhanshali, Chairman, Enam Group. How would you describe Nirmala Sitharaman’s seventh budget and Modi 3.0's first budget? Vallabh Bhanshali: In the context of going from an absolute majority government to a coalition government, on the one hand and on the other hand, we had a very rising and probably capital market with F&O positions, creating a certain commentary in the country, not only amongst people at large, but even amongst regulators like SEBI and RBI and she had to take that into account. Serious determination to continue from where they had left, which is Viksit Bharat 2047, third largest economy in a few years' time and I think very importantly, we should not forget is the rising rhetoric in the country to go back to the 70s style of economic policy.

«Some of the companies will be absorbed by the bigger players, so to your question who will be the winner here, I think that one should stick with the larger companies, the more efficiently managed companies and companies with a franchise, with a brand which the consumer appreciates and looks forward to staying in, I think that that is the space which is going to benefit going forward,» says Anshul Saigal, Founder, Saigal Capital. After what seemed like an inline Q1, because of the monsoon quarter perhaps which is going to flow through in Q2, who do you think is going to win the battle and whether or not you think hotel industry has a prosperous rest of FY25 ahead of them? Anshul Saigal: So, if you go back to the 2003-2007 cycle you look at where rates went around the time of 2007-2008, we are still scraping only the surface in hotel tariffs at this moment. Even though occupancy is high, hotel tariffs are also up, but in comparison to where they were in that phase, we are nowhere close.

Infosys’ financial services vertical clocked growth in Q1 after six quarters. What stands out is Infosys revising its FY25 constant currency (CC) revenue growth guidance higher to 3-4% year-on-year from 1-3% earlier. “(The) guidance implies CQGR of 0.9-1.6% in the next three quarters (organic growth of 2.2% in Q2 and flat revenues in Q3 and Q4 will take Infosys to 4% growth in FY2025E)," said Kotak Institutional Equities report.

Sandip Sabharwal, asksandipsabharwal.com, says tax relief for reviving consumption is essential because consumption is one part of the entire growth basket which has been deeply lagging. Consumption growth has been half the GDP growth. Ultimately GDP growth cannot be sustained unless consumption revives, so that is something we need to see. Markets have been rising almost every day. This kind of frenzied rise did not last. So, people who have a short-term orientation need to be very careful right now. The market rally continues to build. One is just waiting for a dip to buy. Do you see that imminent? Maybe after Budget a sell-off is expected or do you think just deploy, do not wait for that dip at all? Sandip Sabharwal: It makes sense to wait; you cannot buy stocks at all prices. You need to buy and wait for the right opportunity. Now the opportunity will come. We are entering into a phase where the markets are going into a frenzied kind of up move and eventually, we will see a sell-off come in. Now whether that happens next week or next month, it is very tough to break the exact timelines, but it could also be correlated to a correction in the global markets and that could also have a rub-off in India.

Reserve Bank of India economist wrote, providing long-awaited commentary on a key gauge that is used to predict the future course of borrowing costs. “The natural rate of interest estimated earlier for Q3:2021-22 is revised upward from 0.8 -1.0 per cent to 1.1-1.3 per cent, reflecting revision in GDP data. The current estimates suggest a wide range between 1.4-1.9 per cent for Q4:2023-24,” wrote Harendra Kumar Behera from the RBI’s Department of Economic and Policy Research in the central bank’s July Bulletin. The views are personal and do not reflect those of the central bank. RBI Deputy Governor Michael Patra provided guidance for the article.