Cycling Financial News

The Canadian economy grew at a slower-than-expected pace in the first quarter, amid rising expectations that the Bank of Canada will cut interest rates.

Grant Thornton became the largest accounting firm to sell a piece of itself to a private-equity investor on Friday, giving it more financial firepower to make acquisitions and investments—and, potentially, a new client in its owners. The firm’s Chicago-based U.S. unit closed the sale of a stake to a group led by to New Mountain Capital on Friday, following an agreement in March.

Signs of slowing economic growth could set up “fireworks” at the Bank of Canada’s interest rate decision next week, one economist says, as odds rise for the first rate cut of the cycle.

Oxyzo Financial Services, the lending arm of B2B commerce unicorn OfBusiness, has reported Rs 903 crore in operating revenue for FY24, up 59% from Rs 569 crore a year ago. The Gurugram-based company’s net profit rose 47% to Rs 290 crore, from Rs 197 crore in FY23.

TCS is involved in more than 100 Gen AI projects across the companies within Tata Group, Tata Consultancy Services’ chairman, N Chandrasekaran said during his address to shareholders at the annual general meeting on Friday. “All these projects are demonstrating very tangible business impact in terms of greater customer experience, productivity and efficiency. In e-commerce, Gen AI is being used to generate product catalogues, deliver conversational shopping experience, and provide personalised offers. In manufacturing, Gen AI is enabling shop floor workers to troubleshoot complex equipments by asking questions in their native languages, thereby making the availability of the infrastructure very high and improving productivity,” Chandrasekaran said.

northern lights earlier this month, you might be in luck over the next couple of weeks.A major solar active region on the sun continues to put out large expulsions of plasma and magnetic energy, and these impressive solar flares are getting set to face our planet again.Earlier this month, the most severe geomagnetic storm of the past 20 years hit Earth, treating Canadians (and much of the Northern Hemisphere) to a spectacular display of aurora borealis.Now, that same sunspot is reappearing after traversing the far side of the sun, and it has the potential to produce some pretty strong flares in the coming days and months.Global News meteorologist Anthony Farnell says that parts of the country could see some aurora activity as early as this weekend.“There is the potential for a G2 solar storm starting late Friday and we could see northern lights this weekend, but the potential is still there for more flares and even better displays as the sunspot moves towards the centre of the sun facing planet Earth,” he said, adding that the solar storm is “expected to arrive late on May 31 or June 1.”Solar flares are categorized by strength, with B-class flares being the weakest and X-class the strongest.Earlier this month, solar active region AR 13664 produced 12 X-class solar flares across six days, resulting in a G5 magnetic storm on Earth — the strongest since 2003.Farnell said the solar region weakened while on the far side of the Sun, but there’s a good possibility for more X-class flares in the days and weeks ahead.“We are nearing the peak of the 11-year solar cycle, and this peak is stronger than the last peak 11 years ago, so it makes sense that these solar storms we are experiencing have the potential to reach levels we

₹2.1 trillion surplus, up from ₹874.2 billion in 2022-23. Also read: Mint Explainer: What does RBI’s record dividend payout to the government mean? Cumulative expenses dropped to ₹646.94 billion from ₹1.48 trillion, largely thanks to lower provisions, which stood at ₹428.2 billion in 2023-24 as against ₹1.31 trillion in 2022-23.

A popular on-chain metric suggests that the crypto bull market is still far too young for investors to consider selling their Bitcoin, according to CryptoQuant’s Thursday report.

Siddhartha Khemka, Head-Retail Research, MOFSL, says if the BJP manages on its own around 340-350 seats, that will definitely enthuse the market to some extent and overall, we are expecting that barring a few days of volatility, market focus will return to fundamentals. On both the macro as well as on the micro front, India stands pretty confident with 6.5 plus percent growth expected for the next two years and 16- 18% corporate earnings growth for next two years. Are we headed for a sell-on-news market on June 4 and do you think a market which is already easing off, has a chance to go up or will it be down? Siddhartha Khemka: There are various possible scenarios and outcomes and based on that, the market could react. There is a lot of talks and a lot of reports being floated around with respect to how market would react to the number that the BJP kind of garners, so anything between that 310-320 would be a scenario where I would believe that it is a news or event that is already discounted for and we could see some partial profit booking after that.

Dipan Mehta, Director, Elixir Equities, says he wants to go very light into the election season on any positions and any investments he is not completely confident about. Now that the earning season is over and done with, we have a far greater clarity on the prospects of all the companies, so from that point of view it is better to be cautious. If the results are good, then you will have the whole year to profit. But if it is bad, exit will be very difficult. What should be the strategy ahead of not just June 1st but the big one – June 4th? Dipan Mehta: Be as light as possible. Curtail all trading positions, options, futures, everything. Just enjoy the election result and watch all your news channels giving all their comments on what has gone right and what has gone wrong. It is best to be relatively light and in cash. The risk return does not really favour you. Even if it is a spectacularly good result, you will have opportunities to buy. But if it is a bad Lok Sabha result outcome, you would not get a chance to sell, that I am certain about.

fintech startup Vegapay has raised $5.5 million in an equity funding round led by Elevation Capital, with participation from existing investor Eximius Ventures. It had raised $1.1 million in its first institutional funding round in 2023 led by Eximius.

bench strength at top Indian outsourcers has nearly halved in a very short span of time, but that isn’t necessarily a very bad thing for the global services leaders. Higher utilization and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are helping them drive efficiencies through the talent pyramid as the $254-billion industry rides out its toughest business cycle since the global financial crisis. “Large IT services companies typically maintained a bench of 20-30% of their workforce. This has significantly reduced, with many companies now reporting a bench size of around 10%,” said Krishna Vij, business head at staffing firm TeamLease Digital. “This shift can be attributed to increased focus on upskilling and training bench employees for redeployment.”

Solar storms are expected to be back and this will bring back the northern lights. The European Space Agency had recorded an incident of a major solar flare on May 20. This was recorded by the agency’s Solar Orbiter Aircraft and it occurred right behind the Sun. It was rated as a X12 and it is believed that it hasn’t occurred since 2017. Scientists believe that it will lead to more solar flares in the coming days.

Investors are increasingly allocating more money to thematic funds, a category with 161 schemes having assets under management of Rs 3.06 lakh crore as of April. WHAT ARE THEMATIC FUNDS? Thematic funds are a category of equity funds which invest at least 80% of total assets in stocks of a particular theme. Some popular themes launched by fund houses in the last few years are public sector undertakings (PSU), infrastructure, MNC, business cycle, and manufacturing funds. For example, a PSU fund has a portfolio of PSU stocks like NTPC, Power Grid, SBI, HPCL, Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics etc. A manufacturing fund will own companies in sectors like capital goods, engineering, cement, materials etc and exclude sectors like IT and core banking.

While expectations for lower borrowing costs are building, it will take as long as three quarters for interest-rate cuts “to really bear fruit” for bank customers, according to a Bank of Nova Scotia executive.

Years of work on Wall Street to pick up the pace of trading will be put to the test this week. If all goes well, most people won't notice the difference.

Standard Chartered, agreeing that Ethereum will receive the green light for spot ETFs soon, has updated its price target for the leading altcoin. Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s Head of FX Research and Digital Assets Research, believes ETH could peak at $8,000 by the end of the year. According to Geoff Kendrick, spot Ethereum ETFs will drive inflows of $15 billion to $45 billion within the first 12 months. This inflow of capital is what is expected to be the driving force behind the next major move in the crypto market.

Shares have advanced in Europe and Asia ahead of Monday's Memorial Day holiday in the United States

₹2.11 lakh crore dividend to the government for the financial year 2023-2024, which was more than double the market had expected. A higher dividend amount provides a great deal of flexibility to the central government on the fiscal side and this positive surprise enthused all the markets with lower bond yields, rupee appreciating and the stock markets hitting new highs.Also Read: RBI dividend boost to help in improving budget math“The maximum impact of the higher dividend was seen at the longer end of the curve with bond markets feeling optimistic about a cut in government borrowing when the full Budget is presented in July," said Puneet Pal, Head-Fixed Income, PGIM India Mutual Fund.Yields at the shorter end of the curve also came down as a result of lower borrowing in T-bills as announced last week to reduce the government surplus which may go up to ₹6 lakh crore after the transfer of the RBI dividend.

Also Read: India's economy likely slowed to an annual 6.7% in January-March, its weakest pace in a year, finds report"Going forward, we expect investment growth momentum to sustain with extra fiscal space for infrastructure spending given a higher than expected dividend transfer by the RBI. As a result, we recently revised our growth forecasts for CY24 slightly higher by 10 bps to 6.7% YoY," Goldman Sachs analysts Santanu Sengupta, Arjun Varma and Andrew Tilton said in a note.India’s growth momentum remains strong and they expect the core inflation will bottom out in April-June 2024 and be around 4.0% - 4.5% in H2CY24.Meanwhile, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) members from the RBI have sounded cautious on sticky food inflation owing to supply side disruptions due to the ongoing hot weather conditions in many parts of India.

Sensex eased 19.89 points, or 0.03%, to close at 75,390.50, while the Nifty 50 settled 24.65 points, or 0.11%, lower at 22,932.45.“Amidst the celebration, there looms a question regarding the sustainability of this bullish trend. The previous day unfolded with cautious trading, anticipating heightened volatility in the near term.