COST Financial News

Investing.com-- Gold prices steadied near one-month highs on Thursday as weaker-than-expected U.S. inflation data spurred bets on a less aggressive Federal Reserve, while copper was buoyed by the prospect of more stimulus measures in major importer China.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) advanced 17% on-year, beating D-Street estimates, but India's software bellwether warned it lacks immediate visibility on a rebound in demand that remains «soft and uncertain,» with clients across geographies and business verticals deploying elaborate priority filters to assess the necessity of spending money now on discretionary and non-critical projects. The most-valued Tata group company on Wednesday said net profit climbed to ₹11,074 crore, from ₹9,478 crore a year ago, paced by better cost realisation.

traders expect bonds to rally now due to mounting inflation concerns in the aftermath of the rain fury at home, and low confidence on the likely outcome of the Federal Reserve's decision on US interest rates later this month. Higher bond yields could push up broader borrowing costs since these are used as pegs to price debt by companies, too. The special segment of the Clearing Corporation of India's ClearCorp Repo Order-Matching System has shown an unusually large volume of transactions in the 10-year benchmark bond over the past couple of days, treasury executives said.

Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Wednesday moved an application before a special court seeking the release of the ₹71 crore worth of property owned by fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi, who is accused of duping the bank, to recover a part of its dues, according to PTI reports.  Nirav Modi was declared a 'fugitive economic offender' in December 2019, and his uncle Mehul Choksi is accused of committing a ₹14,000 crore scam by obtaining credit facilities fraudulently from the PNB and several of the former's properties, as well as that of his kin, were attached by the Enforcement Directorate under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Currently, only ₹1,066.41 crore of properties have been released from attachment under the PMLA and this value is grossly insufficient to meet the quantifiable loss, it said.  It added that there is an immediate need for the speedy disposal of the assets to realize their best value.

As British interest rates rise, British mortgage payers are hurting. The Bank of England's July financial stability report says that over a million households in the UK are faced with the prospect of their mortgages increasing by £500 a month. However, around 400,000 UK households are on track for an increase of over £1k a month in their mortgage repayments. And plenty of people in that category work in finance. 

The 401(k) system will face its first test in a just a few years, when the oldest members of Gen X hit retirement age — and so far, things are not looking good.

Revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra Wednesday said government decision to impose a 28% tax on funds that online gaming companies collect from their customers will not need further consultation and an early review is unlikely, reported Reuters. Shares of casino operator Delta Corp and other online gaming companies plunged in Wednesday's trade after government, late Tuesday, announced to impose a 28% tax on fund that online gaming companies collect from their customers.

Banks and other financial institutions like to make a big deal about their environmental efforts through their ESG teams, but that doesn't mean they're climatically benign. Their engineering teams are generating big emissions merely through the code they write. 

Despite new consumer price data showing that inflation is slowing, The Senior Citizens League is still increasing its estimate for the 2024 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment.

diamonds, there is a growing whisper among traders in Surat that one of the oldest makers of lab-grown stones has defaulted. The deal that the firm had cut with many wealthy individuals, including professionals, real estate players, and a few farmers in the region to raise money has backfired amid a fall in the price of lab grown diamonds. The outstanding dues would be in the region of Rs 500 crore, three persons in the diamond market told ET. Under a back-to-back financing arrangement, funds were raised from several individuals to install machines that are used to manufacture man-made or lab-grown stones. The scheme, similar to a startup fundraising deal and different from regular institutional lending, rests on trust and a promise of a certain level of production and future price forecast. “With the price of lab-grown diamonds falling, particularly at the trade level more than the retail level, the firm in question is refusing to pay back…Though this is probably the first time the lab grown diamond business is facing such a situation, I don’t think it would have any repercussions on the overall market for lab-grown diamonds. In fact, it could stabilise the price a little,” said an industry person.

The price of Bitcoin is steady at around $30,600, reflecting a nearly 0.50% increase on Wednesday. 

₹386 crore Chandrayaan-1 was successful. Its orbiter kept orbiting around the Moon for 312 days conducting experiments while its impact probe landed on the lunar surface and discovered signs of water. The ₹850 crore Chandrayaan-2’s mandate was bigger.

₹17,792, according to data in the FMCG Pulse update by Kantar. The market researcher said FMCG spends per household is expected to touch ₹20,000 by the end of 2025, as consumers spend more on a range of categories, including personal and household care, and packaged food. “In the last one year, an average household spent ₹17,792 on FMCG, growing at a strong 8% over the previous year.

retailers are exploring entering the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), with around 50 of them looking to open storefronts on the government-backed ecommerce network that they expect will help them reduce cost and reach more consumers. A pan-India retailer association met top ONDC officials to understand how the platform works, and how they could be a part of it. Discussions are still in the early stages.

whisky lovers are increasingly taking to imported bottled-in-origin Scotch such as Johnnie Walker and Glenlivet at the cost of premium Indian-made brands as excise policy changes have slashed price tags of imported brands by up to 30% in some key markets. This has slowed the growth of premium Indian brands such as Paul John Bold and Amrut Fusion as well as bottled in India (BII) brands such as Black & White and 100 Pipers, industry insiders said.

A recent whitepaper by the Federal Reserve warns of “significantly lower profit growth and stock returns in the future.” In his article, Michael Smolyansky explains how the interest and corporate tax rates trends for the last thirty years provided a strong tailwind for corporate profits. As a result, stocks performed better than would have otherwise been the case.

Financial advisors, characteristically not known for making rash decisions or succumbing to knee-jerk reactions, are soaking up the latest inflation data and generally acknowledging some shifting economic tides in the works.

Giant retail brokerage Edward Jones’ decision last year to give its financial advisors more flexibility to work in ways other than its tried and tested, one-advisor, one-office model has spurred 700 financial advisors, or more than 3%, to combine and work in bigger offices, an Edward Jones executive said.

Time is money, and Shopify Inc. wants its workers to understand that maxim applies to pointless meetings, too.

(Bloomberg) — The Bank of Canada raised interest rates for a second straight meeting, pushing back the timeline for inflation’s return to target while revising growth upward.

Canada’s senior governments weren’t transparent enough about the additional $309 billion spent during the COVID-19 crisis, argues a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute, which calls for improvements to the budgeting process.